Regulating the post-independence textile trade: Anglo-Indian tariff negotiations from independence to the Multi-Fibre Arrangement

Abstract

Based upon UK and Indian government archives the article innovatively informs our understanding of business/state relationships in the areas of the regulation of post-colonial international trade. The abandonment of Imperial Preference for tariff protection in Britain proved problematic in the case of the Indian textile industry, whose entry into the British market, tariff free under Imperial Preference, was being replaced first by quota regulations and then by duties from the early 1970s. This article examines the negotiations between British and Indian textile interests in the period before the Multi-Fibre Arrangement as an environment where conflicting interests were negotiated.