British Commercial Interests Research Articles

The Yunnan–Burma railway, 1860s–1940s: Imagining, planning and rejecting a railway that was never built

In the late nineteenth century, British commercial interests in Asia and back home visualised a railway connecting British Burma with inland China, which they saw as a vast unexplored market. British engineers and adventurers were then employed by the commercial bodies to investigate the economy and geography of Yunnan and Upper Burma for the project. The railway was eventually rejected by the British as being unviable and unprofitable. The colonial knowledge created by these missions (in the form of travelogues, survey reports, interviews and studies) was later interpreted by Chinese nationalists as evidence of Britain's ambitions to colonise southwest China in 1905 (the Russo-Japanese War) and 1927 (the Northern Expedition) when the Chinese nation was in deep crisis. But the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War led the Chinese Nationalist government to reconsider the Yunnan–Burma railway as necessary infrastructure for obtaining foreign supplies to save the nation. The colonial knowledge produced by British explorers and merchants earlier was reinterpreted by the Nationalists to try to persuade the British authorities to construct the Burma section of the railway. By tracing the history of this failed project, this article argues that nationalist understandings of colonial infrastructure were far from fixed and consistent. It recounts the circulation of colonial knowledge on the Yunnan–Burma railway from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, showing how different nationalist agents in Asia interpreted and reinterpreted colonial infrastructure at various critical periods.

Imperial Schemes: Empire and the Rise of the British Business-State, 1914–1939

AbstractDuring and after World War I, British businessmen made major inroads in political, administrative, and policymaking circles. In so doing, they forged a nexus of power, the business-state, that aligned the interests of big business with the state’s imperial aspirations. Well before the widespread acceptance of the concept of the national economy, there was a common understanding in London that what was good for British business, especially industry, was good for the economic health of the country and empire. The result was that after World War I, the state aggressively helped British commercial interests.

Building the BBC-branded NGO: Overseas Development, the World Service, and the Marshall Plan of the Mind, c.1965-99.

Overseas broadcasting has been an integral part of the BBC's remit since the creation of its Empire Service in 1932. Throughout its history, the BBC has consistently argued that its services for overseas listeners should not be classified as a form of British propaganda, but instead understood as a fundamentally benevolent undertaking, providing objective, impartial, and trustworthy news and information to hundreds of millions of listeners worldwide. In the post-imperial era, the World Service increasingly depicted itself as not just a 'global public service broadcaster', but also as a kind of humanitarian endeavour, an 'Oxfam of the Mind' which made a significant contribution to Britain's wider efforts in the field of overseas development. This article critically evaluates this vision of the BBC World Service as a post-imperial 'gift to the world'. It outlines how, in the early 1990s, the World Service created the first BBC-branded overseas development NGO, the Marshall Plan of the Mind (MPM), which used both UK government and external philanthropic funding to help promote British commercial and diplomatic interests in post-communist Eastern Europe. MPM is then contextualized in relation to the World Service's longer (and largely overlooked) history of overseas development work and its relationship with the NGO sector, both before and after the end of the Cold War. By exploring how and why the World Service inserted itself into the NGO sphere, this work contributes to ongoing historical debates regarding the BBC's relationship with the state and the role(s) that global development NGOs have played in shaping Britain's post-imperial 'place in the world'.

THE COMITÉ DE L'AFRIQUE FRANÇAISE, THE CHAD PLAN, AND THE ORIGINS OF FASHODA

AbstractThe Comité de l'Afrique française, founded in 1890, is often regarded as the epitome of colonial nationalism. On closer examination, however, the Comité and its signature policy, the Chad plan, can be shown to have acted as instruments of choice for financial and commercial lobbies with particular interests in the Congo. The Chad plan and its successor and complement, the Upper Nile policy, were primarily intended to advance the interests of King Leopold and his French sympathizers. The unavoidable clash with British strategic and commercial interests in the region that ensued helped to unleash the forces of nationalism and led, ineluctably, to the Fashoda crisis and the conquest of Chad.

Reassessing FERA: Examining British firms’ strategic responses to ‘Indianisation’

The Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, introduced in India in 1973, was the culmination of efforts to ‘Socialise’ economic policies and ‘Indianise’ corporate ownership. It resulted in a flight of foreign capital as Multinational Enterprises exited India to avoid these risks, finally driving out long-established British commercial interests. This article uses new sources to reassess how British businesses perceived the threats of Indianisation and analyses how they strategically responded to them. It shows that British-owned firms used a diverse range of strategies, some drawing on their extensive experience, knowledge and networks, built through long tenures in India, to adapt successfully.

Palmerston and The Times: Foreign Policy, the Press and Public Opinion in Mid-Victorian Britain, by Laurence Fenton

Two of the major historical developments in British politics from the 1830s were the construction and manipulation of ‘public opinion’ by prominent politicians and the expansion and growing influence of the metropolitan and provincial press. As foreign secretary after 1822, George Canning defined a patriotic, Protestant and liberty-loving ‘public opinion’—bolstering his diplomatic aims of championing liberal progress against repression and promoting British commercial interests around the world. From the 1830s, Palmerston self-consciously took up Canning’s mantle, serving as foreign secretary (1830–4, 1835–41 and 1846–51) and prime minister (1855–8 and 1859–65). A genial affability, diplomatic expertise, and the celebration of the nation’s liberal political values giving Britain a moral sway in the world, were combined with a subtle cultivation of the press. The expansion of the press, meanwhile, gave further force to ‘public opinion’. Debate ensued about the extent to which the press (the ‘fourth estate’, as Macaulay described it in 1828) educated, expressed or directed ‘public opinion’. But there existed a consensus that the comparative freedom of the British press, in contrast to parts of Continental Europe, was evidence of a constitutional liberty by which the political public were moralised and improved.

To Be or Not to Be? The North Korean Challenge to British Foreign Policy, 1971–1976

This article seeks to explore the arguments that occurred mainly within the British Foreign Office and in its discussions with other government ministries in the early 1970s concerning the matter of affording diplomatic recognition to North Korea. Legal experts within the Foreign Office were concerned that London's non-recognition of Pyongyang could render Britain's position hypocritical and even illegal vis-à-vis its potential recognition of North Vietnam. British diplomats in Seoul however were adamant that North Korea should be not recognized for fear of angering both the South Korean and the American allies and damaging British commercial interests in South Korea. The Foreign Office ministers decided to delay the inevitable recognition for as long as they could, but then the illegal activities of North Korean diplomats in Europe came to light in 1976 and subsequently put an end to potential public queries about Britain's legal duty to recognise the North Korean regime.

British commercial interests on the French Atlantic coast, c.1560-1713*

This article explores British commercial interests on the French Atlantic coast in the long seventeenth century. This is a period characterized by conflict, when trade between Britain and France was at times prohibited due to war or restricted because of political or economic policy. Despite prohibitions, however, commercial agents continued to facilitate exchanges along these routes, in some cases with the assistance of authorities. Here, specific Franco-Scottish trading links are explored and the experiences of Scottish commercial agents in the French Atlantic coast ports are compared with those of English and Irish, particularly during the Nine Years' War (1688–97) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–13).

Atlantic Dimensions of the American Revolution: Imperial Priorities and the Portuguese Reaction to the North American Bid for Independence (1775-83)

This article explains and contextualizes the reaction of the Portuguese monarchy and government to the rebellion and independence of the British colonies in North America. This reaction was a mixed one, shaped by the simultaneous but conflicting motivations of an economic interest in North American trade, an abhorrence on the part of the Portuguese Crown for democratic rebellion against monarchical authority and a fundamental requirement to maintain a stable relationship with long-time ally Great Britain. Although the Lisbon regime initially reacted very strongly against the Americans’ insurrection, later, under a new queen, the Portuguese moderated their position so as not to damage their long-term imperial political and economic interests. This article also examines the economic and political power context of the contemporary Atlantic World from the Portuguese perspective, and specifically outlines the multiple ties that existed between Portugal and the North American British colonies during the eighteenth century. The argument demonstrates that Portugal reacted according to demands created by its overseas empire: maximizing trading profits, manipulating the balance of power in Europe among nations with overseas colonies and discouraging the further spread of aspirations toward independence throughout the Americas, most notably to Portuguese-held Brazil. The Portuguese role as a fundamental player in the early modern Atlantic World is chronically underappreciated and understudied in modern English-language historiography. Despite the significance of Portugal as a trading partner to the American colonies, and despite the importance of the Portuguese Atlantic colonial system to British commercial and military interests in the eighteenth century, no scholarly treatment of this specific subject has ever appeared in the primary journals that regularly consider Atlantic World imperial power dynamics or the place of the incipient United States within them. This contribution, then, helps to fill an obvious gap in the historical literature of the long eighteenth century and the revolutionary era in the Americas.

Chinese Business in the Making of a Malay State, 1882-1941: Kedah and Penang (review)

Reviewed by: Chinese Business in the Making of a Malay State, 1882-1941: Kedah and Penang Neil Khor Chinese Business in the Making of a Malay State, 1882-1941: Kedah and Penang Wu Xiao Aun Singapore: NUS Press, 2010; 271 pp, index. ISBN 978-9971-69-496-8 (Paperback) George Town, the capital city of Penang state in northwestern Malaysia, is dotted with Western-style mansions. Some have been converted into business premises, whilst others have been demolished to make way for high-end condominiums. Only a handful survive in their original state with large lawns, and not many house the original families that built them. They were built to make a statement. Locally known as 'ang mor lau' (literally, the white man's house), these were more social-climbing 'statements' than homes. Seldom revealed is how these families were able to pull together so much wealth to build their houses and what effects their business activities had on the host communities that made them rich. Who were their business partners and how did they contribute to the economic basis of Malaysia's early industries? This book by Wu Xiao Aun, Professor at Peking University and Director of the Centre for the Study of the Chinese Overseas, first published in 2004, is one of the most lucid accounts of the rise of Chinese family businesses, their networks and their activities in Penang and Kedah. In the process of uncovering the workings of family businesses, the central thesis of the book is about the catalytic role these families played in the 'making' of a Malay state. Obviously, there are questions that immediately come to mind. Is the lens of family history, no matter how intricately described, able to shed enough light on the complex process of the emergence of a 'Malay state'? What is the definition of a 'Malay state', especially when applied to the Kedah sultanate, the oldest Malay-Muslim sultanate in Malaysia with roots going back to pre-Islamic times? Whilst it is undeniable that the businesses built up by these Chinese families are inextricably bound up with the emergence of a legislative framework, infrastructure and administrative system that we have come to identify with the 'modern state', is this the whole story? To a certain extent, the book attempts to answer these questions by way of charting the various stages of the evolution of Chinese family businesses roughly corresponding to the various phases of British intervention in Kedah. Whilst the relationship between Chinese traders and the Malay aristocracy predates Western colonialism, the presence of the British in Penang did strengthen the middleman position of the Chinese, especially if the latter were British subjects. Nonetheless, this business relationship was beneficial to the Chinese as well as their Malay aristocratic counterparts. In fact, the basis of the wealth of the Choong family, for example, was based upon the special relationship between the Choong patriarch Choong Cheng Kean and his patron, the Raja Muda of Kedah. [End Page 115] The British not only tolerated, but encouraged, the Chinese to strengthen this intermediary role as they were the buffer between expanding British commercial interests and the 'modernizing' Malay state. In the case of Kedah, there was a further complication as all parties had to take into account the role of Siam(modern Thailand) as Kedah's overlord. There were three sources for the capital the Chinese families accumulated through their business activities, intermediary role and special relationship with the Kedah aristocracy. The most valuable was paddy destined for Chinese-owned rice mills in Penang; secondly, an assortment of revenue farms ranging from the lucrative opium & spirits to gambling & pawn-broking; and finally, tax collection and money lending. Wu's exhaustive use of colonial records and, more importantly, his mining of family records add new dimensions to this often-told tale. We see the same process at work with Yap Ah Loy in Kuala Lumpur, albeit the Yap dynasty did not grow as influential as the Lim, Choong and Phuah families in Kedah. More interestingly, after each of these families made their money in Kedah, they moved to British Penang, using the latter as their base and access point to the global marketplace...

‘We are virtually at war with Russia’: Britain and the Cold War in East Asia, 1923–40

Despite the fact that the Bolshevik Revolution took place in 1917, the Cold War is typically seen as a conflict that only emerged in the aftermath of the Second World War. This paper questions that orthodox interpretation by studying the tense relations that existed in the inter-war period between Britain and the Soviet Union. In particular it looks at Anglo-Soviet rivalry in East Asia in the mid-1920s when the Comintern inspired the Kuomintang in China to challenge British commercial interests in that country and the consequences that this competition had for relations down to 1940 and beyond.

An ‘anti-Catholicism of free trade?’ Religion and the Anglo-Italian negotiations of 1863

This article focuses on the 1863 Anglo-Italian Commercial Treaty as a case study for a wider analysis of the relations between the newly unified Italy and Britain. The importance of this treaty lies chiefly in its peculiarity, mainly due to the fact that the British proposed the inclusion of a religious clause in its text. This clause was meant to protect Protestant missionaries operating in rural parts of Italy, where religious intolerance was still frequent. The resulting confrontation showed the extent to which lack of communication between the Board of Trade and the Foreign Office hampered the pursuit of British policy aims, reflecting the then fashionable combination of free trade and Protestantism to promote a form of ‘anglicized globalization’ in Southern Europe. This resulted in the frustration of British commercial interests as defined by the Chambers of Commerce. The present article throws new light on the multi-layered nature of the British engagement with Italy, which involved different economic and religious pressure groups, and confirms Peter Marsh’s thesis about the inadequacy of the British commercial approach to continental Europe in the age of free trade.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: ‘Nowhere is a Place’: Travel Writing in Sixteenth‐Century England

Teaching & Learning Guide for: ‘Nowhere is a Place’: Travel Writing in Sixteenth‐Century England

The Sinking of the S.S. Kowshing: International Law, Diplomacy, and the Sino-Japanese War

AbstractIn July 1894, the Japanese navy sank the British steamshipKowshing, leased by China to transport troops to Korea. Diplomatic negotiations over compensation for the loss of the ship persisted for the next decade. In insisting upon China's responsibility, the British Foreign Office forsook the judgments of international legal experts and demonstrated that its main goals were to support British commercial interests and to encourage the position of Japan in East Asia. The surprising denoument of theKowshingincident was China's payment of damages for the ship in 1903.

Charles Whitworth: Diplomat in the Age of Peter the Great by Janet M. s> Hartley (review)

REVIEWS 339 peasant 'strongmen'who in monasteriesand villageschallenged the authority of the church hierarchy. In fact, several of these articles confirm the sheer undergovernment which afflicted the vast and underpopulated Russian nation, now and for many years. In a section on arts and sciences, Lindsey Hughes comments perceptively on the relationship between Russian and Western culture, Eve Levin deals with Western medicine in Russia, though one should perhaps stressthat nowhere in Europe in the seventeenthcentury did state-funded Western medical care extend to the non-governmental population, or even to the governmentalpopulation. Finally, Nancy Shields Kollman discusses in a somewhat pedestrian manner the psychology of Muscovite society, Daniel Kaiser deals with the emergence of individualism from the consciousness of death as a collective experience, reflected in the increasinglydetailed epitaphscarved on gravestones,which began to give the rank,occupation and length of life of the dead. FinallyPaul Bushkovitchsums up the nature, extent, cost and qualityof the changeswhich servedto prepare the way for Peter'snew policies. All told this is a very valuable addition to the literature in English on Russian seventeenth-centuryhistory, and the footnotes provide a very useful and up-to-date guide to archivaland published sources. London ISABELDE MADARIAGA Hartley,Janet M. Charles Whitworth: Diplomat intheAgeofPeter theGreat. Ashgate, Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2002. XVi + 242 PP. Illustration.Maps. Notes. Appendix. Bibliography.Index. /46.oo. CEHARLES WHITWORTH (I675-I725), one of the most significantBritish diplomats in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, has long been neglected by historians.Janet Hartley's excellent biography of him has now filled that void. Her book is not a tedious recitationof diplomaticnegotiationsbut is an in-depth study of a shrewd diplomat who was often frustratedand irritated by unpleasantconditionsin countrieshe visitedand who sent home to government officials and personal acquaintances perceptive comments, usually critical,on the politics and personagesof his time. Whitworth, the son of a country gentleman, was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, CambridgeUniversity.His family'smodest financial position forced him to seek employment with the British government. After a shorttime as a clerkat the Board of Trade, he entered the diplomatic service.Taking advantageof the patronage of a relative, George Stepney, he went as Stepney'ssecretaryon a mission to Brandenburg-Prussia and Vienna. In 1702 he was sent on his firstindependent mission to the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire at Ratisbon. By I704, having gained experiencewith the intricaciesof centralEuropean politics,Whitworthwas chosen by his governmentto go to the Russia of Peter I; he servedthere from I705to 1712. Hartley, by her choice of the book's subtitle and her decision to devote three of nine chaptersto his years in Russia, 340 SEER, 84, 2, 2006 emphasizes that this was the pivotal assignmentof his long diplomatic career. He emerged as the foremost Britishexpert on Russia. In Russia the complex intermingling of trade and politics tested his skill at protecting British commercial interests and at assessing the possibility of expandingBritishmilitaryand politicalroles on the continent.The convoluted negotiations involved in two major wars, the War of the Spanish Succession and the great Northern War, engaged the diplomatsof most major European countries. Although Whitworth's activities failed to influence British efforts in the Spanish War, the Northern War would engage his attention for many years, even after he permanently left Russia. His role at Peter'scourt spannedthe transitionfrom that of an agent primarily concerned with trade to that of a permanent residentambassadorresponsible for protecting all aspects of British interests. This change is illustrated by his part in pacifying the Tsar's anger over the arrestin London in I708 of the Russian ambassador;Peter would not be satisfiedwith anything less than a response deliveredby an ambassadorextraordinary. Whitworth astutely observed Russia's growing military strength and increasing political importance. He recognized that Russia was no longer a peripheralcountrythat could be slightedor ignored by the Westernstates.He warned his governmentthat Peter'sRussiawas changing the balance of power in the north, and new ways of dealing with Peter and the new Russian empire must be developed. This theme of Russia as a potential threat to the stability of Europe was constantlyrepeated by Whitworthfor the rest of his career. Upon his return to England in I712, Whitworth renewed his...

‘Battlelines for Suez’: The Abadan Crisis of 1951 and the Formation of the Suez Group

The Abadan crisis was the initial phase of the protracted crisis in Anglo-Persian relations 1951–54, precipitated by Persia's nationalisation of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in May 1951. For many in the Tory party, it provided the test run of British policy in the Middle East. It seemed to demonstrate what should be the appropriate British response to the challenge of indigenous nationalism to British strategic and commercial interests in the region: namely, a robust assertion of British interests by all means necessary, including the use of force. This article examines Conservative perceptions and behaviour during the Abadan crisis, as the experience proved a vital formative influence upon the later Suez Group, the vociferous Tory backbench pressure group which played a contributory role in the Eden government's decision to confront Nasser in 1956. It seeks to show how the crisis contributed to the emergence of a clearly identifiable faction of imperial-minded Conservative MPs who cared passionately about Britain's place in the world, and specifically in the Middle East. The article looks at the relationship between the Conservative leadership and the nascent backbench faction and considers whether Conservative front bench policy and behaviour in this crisis in any way contributed to the emergence of the Suez Group.

Feminism Against the East/West Divide: Lady Mary's Turkish Embassy Letters

Feminism Against the East/West Divide: Lady Mary’s Turkish Embassy Letters Teresa Heffernan (bio) In 1717, Lady Mary Pierrepont journeyed to the Ottoman Empire with her husband, Edward Wortley, who had been appointed British Ambassador to the Sublime Porte but had failed miserably as a diplomat and was recalled after only fifteen months. During their brief sojourn, he attempted to negotiate peace between the Ottomans and Austrians and to safeguard British commercial and naval interests in the Levant; she kept a journal and wrote letters on Turkish culture and habits. Lady Mary upon returning to England produced an edited and polished epistolary account of her travels based on these records. Although her daughter Lady Bute burnt the journal and tried to prevent the publication of the letters, the travel narrative was finally published in 1763, a year after Lady Mary’s death. The Embassy Letters were immediately popular and reprinted often to meet the demand; they also received glowing reviews from figures such as Dr. Johnson, Voltaire, and Gibbon. Recent analysis of the letters has focused largely on the question of whether Lady Mary’s letters participated in or resisted the orientalism of her day and the related issue of whether or to what extent her narrative can be read as feminist. Lisa Lowe, arguing that Edward Said’s theory of orientalism does not take into account the heterogeneity of works on the East, reads Lady Mary’s work as a specifically gendered text which makes use of an emergent feminist discourse to resist the standard orientalist tropes about Eastern women found in many of the works of male travel writers such as Robert Withers, George Sandy, John Covel, Jean Dumont, and Aaron Hill. Despite her own lapses into the orientalist “rhetoric of difference” that characterizes male travel writing and that produces the Occident/Orient divide, Lady Mary, Lowe argues, dissents from this dominant discourse by deploying a “rhetoric of likeness” that [End Page 201] encourages an identification with Turkish women. She concludes: “Lady Mary employs the rhetoric of identification between women of Turkish and English courts as a means of intervening in the differentiating rhetoric of orientalism.” 1 Meyda Yegenoglu, however, takes issue with Lowe’s reading, suggesting that Lady Mary’s work, rather than disrupting the monolithic narrative of orientalism, instead foregrounds the complicity between orientalism and Western feminism. In her travels, Yegenoglu argues, Lady Mary assumes a masculine role (a role unavailable to her in the “masculine” West), “attaches a penis to herself,” and penetrates a “feminized” East, thus complementing rather than challenging the work of the male colonist. While many of the male travelers to the Orient were frustrated by their lack of access to the space of the Eastern woman, the metonymic heart of the Orient, Lady Mary, in good colonial fashion, exposes its inner workings, thus satisfying the desire for the “truth” of the other and solidifying the position of the West as the knowing subject. 2 Srinivas Aravamudan suggests that Lady Mary is far too conscious of the performative nature of writing to invest unquestioningly in such an empirical model in her travel account. It is the very model of the masquerade that Lady Mary valorizes that offers the female subject “a kind freedom that suspends truth.” Interested neither in “capturing” and possessing the Turkish woman nor in indulging the other colonialist narrative of “going native,” Lady Mary maintains a “partial identification” with aristocratic Turkish women, which allows for the possibility of a “positive orientalist ideal” that is both “progressive and inclusionary.” 3 As these debates in the scholarship suggest, it would be reductive either to dismiss Lady Mary’s text as irredeemably orientalist or to herald it as unquestionably feminist. The complicated nexus of her personal life, her role as a public figure, her blue-blood allegiances, the intellectual circle she traveled in, and her race and class biases certainly complicate any attempts to endorse her as a perfect cultural ambassador, bridging the divide between Eastern and Western women. For instance, in several letters, she celebrates the superior beauty of Turkish women, a description that leads Anita Desai to comment enthusiastically on her “extraordinary” attitude to an alien culture, and yet...

Britain and the Return of Japanese Economic Interests to South East Asia after the Second World War

Despite Japan's military defeat in 1945, Japanese economic interests returned to South East Asia remarkably rapidly in the post-war era. Backed by the United States, Japanese economic expansionism represented a new threat to British commercial and financial interests in a region much coveted by British policy-makers. Yet, notwithstanding doubts and fears expressed by some British business leaders and public servants, British policy played an important role in the re-emergence of Japan as an economic force in South East Asia. Although emphasis was placed on controlling the process, the logic behind the Anglo-American coalition in the Cold War pointed towards the need to build up Japan as a counterweight to communist China. At the same time, it was appreciated that Japanese trade and investment would benefit the sterling area as well as the economic development (and, hence, political management) of South East Asia. The resurrection of Japanese economic activity in South East Asia was also a side-effect of British decolonization policy. As this was increasingly fulfilled, indigenous political and business leaders welcomed economic links with the ‘new’ Japan.

The armed police in the British colonial tradition

The model of policing which originated in Ireland was designed to police a foreign land and is known as the colonial system. Describes the influence of the colonial model in the development of the armed police in India, used for order maintenance rather than the prevention and detection of crime. Contrasts with the Metropolitan Police system are drawn and the history of the Indian police is outlined. Although successful in protecting British commercial and political interests in the past it no longer serves the more recent needs of India, e.g. dealing with underlying social problems, allowing democratic ideals and freedom. A civilian model needs to be developed.

‘Trouble Must Follow’: Australia's Ban on Iron Ore Exports to Japan in 1938

Despite the attention that has been given to the role of economic sanctions in Japan's decision to launch the Pacific war, Australia's decision to ban iron ore exports to Japan has been given little attention, even though this was one of the earliest economic sanctions imposed onimperial Japan in the 1930s. To a degree this neglect can be traced to a preoccupation with the actions and objectives of the great powers and a failure to consider the opportunities available to small nations to take significant initiatives. The following article traces the origins of the iron ore embargo back to 1934 when Essington Lewis, the Managing Director of the Broken Hill Proprietary Company Ltd (BHP), Australia's iron and steel monopoly, visited Japan and subsequently advocated the development of an Australian armaments industry to counter probable Japanese aggression in the Pacific. In Japan Lewis crossed paths with J. G. Latham, the Minister for External Affairs, who was leading the Australian government's Eastern Mission. Latham returned to Australia with conclusions that differed fundamentally from those of Lewis, who came up with a plan to take advantage of Japan's dependence on imports of iron ore and other iron products to finance investment in Australian armaments manufacturing. In explaining this outcome the article discusses interactions between a number of conflicts: between Latham and Lewis; between the British Treasury and the Foreign Office; and between the Japanese army and navy. In London the Treasury wanted to focus on the European theatre, while also holding down military spending in order to achieve balanced budgets. The Treasury believed that the way to best defend British commercial interests in Asia was to appease Japan. On the other hand, the Foreign Office was committed to the protection of British interests in the Far East by a more forceful diplomacy, although it was only willing to counten-ance behavior short of military action. Consistent with Latham's recommendations to his government, the emerging consensus in London was that while a settlement in China would help to safeguard British interests there, as long as the Japanese were bound up in their war in China they were less likely to attack British colonies in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. In 1936 this orientation was challenged by a shift in the balance of power in Tokyo away from the army and in favor of the navy. Although priority continued to be placed on winning the war in China and guarding against an attack from the Soviet Union, now the navy's plan for southward expansion was given more careful consideration and credibility.