British Trade Research Articles

Re-formation in Action: Liberty in a Wesleyan Spirit and Praxis—The Tolpuddle Martyrs, Part I

ABSTRACT This article (in two parts) focuses on Methodist agricultural labourers who founded one of the first British trade unions in 1833. Six of them—including three Methodist local preachers—were convicted of taking an unlawful oath on joining the union. In consequence, they were sentenced to seven years' transportation to Australia. The public outcry was immediate, and this led to a full pardon being granted to them three years later. The Wesleyan Methodist leadership was silent and the story has received minimal attention from Methodist historians. These men demonstrated a deep scriptural faithfulness, and their understanding of God's liberating grace motivated their actions.

Masters and Servants: The Hudson's Bay Company and Its North American Workforce, 1668–1786 by Scott P. Stephen

Reviewed by: Masters and Servants: The Hudson's Bay Company and Its North American Workforce, 1668–1786 by Scott P. Stephen Scott Berthelette Scott P. Stephen, Masters and Servants: The Hudson's Bay Company and Its North American Workforce, 1668-1786 (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press 2019) In Masters and Servants, Scott P. Stephen has probed the voluminous archival holdings of the Hudson's Bay Company (correspondence, minute books, accounts, and post journals) to unpack the nitty-gritty details of labour relations within the Hudson's Bay Company during the corporation's long first century (1668-1786). Stephen's central argument is that the Hudson's Bay Company's labour relations were underwritten by deep-rooted understandings [End Page 203] of master-servant relationships within a household setting and that Company posts should be construed as "household factories." Indeed, as Stephen demonstrates, the patriarchal household family made up of a master (the patriarch) and a family of kin, apprentices, and servants, was the dominant social construct of early modern Britain and its overseas colonies and trading companies. As Stephen demonstrates, the hbc's household factory was diverse. Hudson's Bay Company servants were not just Londoners and Orcadians, but also Canadien voyageurs who had absconded from French posts, Inuit and Chipewyan captives sold to factors by Lowland Cree raiders, and even the "mixed-blood" sons of hbc fathers and Indigenous mothers. The labour requirements of hbc factories were also diverse. The London Committee, governors, and factors demanded servants that could fulfill a variety of roles such as general labourers, mariners, officers, clerks, surgeons, and myriad tradesmen—armourers, bricklayers, carpenters, coopers, gunsmiths sawyers, shipwrights, and tailors—as well as more specialized labour in the form of birchbark canoe-makers and linguistic and cultural interpreters. Stephen's study outlines two major periods of the Company's history. The period from the 1670 charter to the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht was marked by an initial flurry of development along the Hudson Bay littoral followed by massive instability in both recruitment and retention of labour due to wartime conditions and French bayside military excursions. The second period, following the peace of 1713, was marked by much-needed stability and security and saw the Company's labour needs expanded and diversified as it established slooping (coastal trading) operations, whale fisheries, and several inland trading houses—Henley House (1743), Flamborough House (1749), and Cumberland House (1774). Stephen's analysis ends in 1786 when the hbc created the position of chief inland factor, which shifted the managerial centre of gravity and reoriented the balance of power of the coastal household factory. Stephen does a particularly good job at drawing comparisons of labour relations to early modern Britain and other long-distance British trading companies, like the East Indian Company (eic), Royal African Company (rac), and the Levant Company, to show how the masterservant relationship and the household system reflected larger trends in British imperialism. Unfortunately, Stephen does not provide a sense of whether there was something uniquely British about the household factory, and does not venture into French, Dutch, Spanish Atlantic Worlds to juxtapose the hbc's model of household governance against non-British trading companies, such as the French Compagnie du Nord, which operated in Hudson Bay alongside the hbc for decades. The lack of transnational or trans-imperial comparison opens the question as to how French or Canadien Company servants, like Jean-Baptise D'Laryea and Louis Primeau (whose careers are outlined by Stephen), saw themselves fitting into the structures of the household system with its reciprocal obligations, deferential and paternalistic behaviours, and social and moral covenants. To Stephen's credit, however, he does a much better job at teasing out social relations between the Homeguard Cree and the hbc, demonstrating how the Cree often imposed their own conceptions of kinship through marriage alliances in order to create reciprocal social connections on unwitting hbc factors and servants, which produced tensions within the household factory that mandated that servants remained celibate. [End Page 204] While the "household factory" produced a remarkably secure and stable political-economic entity that connected the Hudson Bay watershed fur trade economy to the larger British Atlantic World, Stephen...

Negotiating ‘outer Europe’: the Trades Union Congress (TUC), transnational trade unionism and European integration in the 1950s

ABSTRACTThe 1950s were a frenetic moment in the European integration process during which the European Economic Community (EEC), the ultimately abortive Free Trade Area (FTA), and subsequently the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) were all negotiated. Trade unions showed keen interest in these schemes; moreover, their own highly institutionalised cooperation suggested they might come to play a key role in shaping them. And yet scholars have argued how divergent traditions and domestic pressures precluded the emergence of a coherent trade union platform on European unity. While not rejecting the structural weaknesses of union internationalism in this regard, this article asks why union centres nevertheless continued to engage with one another on the integration question. Focusing on the British Trade Unions Congress (TUC) and deploying a transnational approach to best understand the interaction between the national and international levels, it shows that union linkages still offered the TUC and its counterparts a valuable chance to learn from and persuade others – and even their governments – of their views, objectives and affairs. Such trade union diplomacy was thus in and of itself valuable despite wider union spats and misgivings, and did at times impact the broader language and approach of the countries involved.

Stories from the margins: Indian business communities in the growth of colonial Singapore

Colonial Singapore witnessed the movement and settling of Chinese, Malay, Indian, Arab, European and other mercantile groups as a free port and emporium of the British Empire. This social landscape was defined by boundaries between the different ethnic communities, often drawn up by the British, in contrast to the cosmopolitan exchanges of the market. This article focuses on the Indian business communities which had played a significant role in maritime trade networks since pre-colonial times and continued to be a part of Singapore's developing society and economy in the British period. A minority in the colonial era port city and largely confined within intra-ethnic economic and social circuits, Indians participated in the complex colonial structure of trade and credit alongside British, European and Asian traders and merchant houses, as brokers, agents, and retailers. British hegemony over the Indian subcontinent was both an advantage and a disadvantage for these Indian trading communities. This article brings to light the history of Indian networks in the colonial transnational flows of capital and entrepreneurship, and their patterns of integration into and role in the development of Singapore, a role marginalised in the scholarship and the national narratives alike by a focus on the large-scale Indian labour migrations.

Dutch objections to British Singapore, 1819–1824: Law, politics, commerce and a diplomatic misstep

The year 1819 is almost universally taken as a seminal date in Singapore historiography. Yet Stamford Raffles’ founding of a British trading post there was controversial from the start. The Dutch and the British haggled as to whether or not Raffles had overstepped his authority, and whether the trading post was legal. From the start, the Dutch demanded that the British quit their occupation of Singapore. During a three-year hiatus in the Anglo–Dutch negotiations (1820–23), Anton Reinhard Falck, the lead Dutch negotiator, decided to drop claims to Singapore in favour of a rearrangement of possessions in the archipelago. Crucially, he concluded that dropping claims over Singapore would not amount to a real loss. Instead, Falck hoped to use Singapore as a bargaining chip to squeeze additional concessions from the British. The Dutch formally relinquished their claim over Singapore in article 12 of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty, which gave full recognition and legitimacy to the British post, and sanctioned a breakup of the Johor-Riau Empire with the Singapore Straits acting as a notional dividing line. Earlier studies were substantially based on English-language materials and present the British as dominating the negotiations. The present article, based on Dutch archival materials as well as studies and sources in French, Dutch and English, reveals a fuller story of diplomatic disputes, territorial concessions, errors of judgement, and the triggering of the Dutch empire in the archipelago, in a paper war for the contested space of Singapore.

Supplying slavery: Jamaica, North America, and British intra-imperial trade, 1752–1769

ABSTRACT Historians have long understood the economic importance of Jamaica to the eighteenth-century British empire, but the vast profits that the island's sugar-slave complexes produced could only have existed with the supplies and provisions provided by mainland colonists in North America. For all the importance of this north–south axis of trade in supporting Jamaica and the West Indies more generally, its quantitative dimensions remain unclear. Based on data extracted from 5,227 entrance and 4,620 clearance records from British naval office shipping lists for Kingston, Jamaica from 1752 to 1769, this article re-assesses the size, nature, and value of trade between North America and the West Indies. The shipping lists reveal not only how deeply committed the mainland was to supplying Jamaican slavery, but also suggests that we reconsider the island as a powerful regional hub within the larger British Atlantic economy, one in which both North America and West Africa figured as important hinterlands. Understanding these interconnections is crucial as we work to more fully uncover the trans-regional interdependencies created by slavery and the slave trade.

Branding: A Prosthesis of Identity

This article investigates the prosthesis of identity through the process of branding. It examines cross-cultural manifestations of this phenomena from sixth millennium BCE Syria to twelfth century Japan and Britain. From the Neolithic Era, humanity has sort to extend their identities using pictorial signs that were characteristically simple. Designed to be distinctive and instantly recognisable, the totemic symbols served to signal the origin of the bearer. Subsequently, the development of branding coincided with periods of increased in mobility both in respect to geography and social strata. This includes fifth millennium Mesopotamia, nineteenth century Britain, and America during the 1920s. There are fewer articles of greater influence on contemporary culture than A Theory of Human Motivation written by Abraham Maslow in 1943. Nearly seventy-five years later, his theories about the societal need for “belongingness” and “esteem” remain a mainstay of advertising campaigns (Maslow). Although the principles are used to sell a broad range of products from shampoo to breakfast cereal they are epitomised by apparel. This is with refence to garments and accessories bearing corporation logos. Whereas other purchased items, imbued with abstract products, are intended for personal consumption the public display of these symbols may be interpreted as a form of signalling. The intention of the wearers is to literally seek the fulfilment of the aforementioned social needs.

State Answers to Religious Diversity in Germany and Singapore: History, Philosophy and Strategy

AbstractThis Article focuses on the extent to which the different legal approaches of Germany and Singapore to religious diversity were shaped by history. It first analyzes the development in Germany and describes four phases of the development of the law on the relationship between church and state. Starting with the consequences of reformation, it shows that—for centuries—the relationship between denominations had been the crucial matter of this body of law. Only later, the law dealt with conflicts between religion and atheism. This Article then presents the fundamental rights approach of the Basic Law and examines it against the backdrop of the historical development and recent challenges. Second, this Article offers a historical account of Singapore’s attempts at regulating and managing religious diversity. It starts with the establishment of a British trading post on the island in 1819 and runs up to the present day. As a result of mass migration in its early years, Singapore was to become, in the twentieth century, one of the most religiously and culturally diverse nations in the world. This Article shows that Singapore has sought to regulate and manage the various religious groups through a combination of legislation and state policy.

Hegemonic Power Structures: A Study of Midnight’s Children

At the time of the Renaissance British trade flourished and reached its zenith with outward expansion of colonialism. British dominated the nineteenth century, but soon after the world wars, colonial power could neither exert the mode of control necessary to maintain their hold over the territories overseas nor morally justify their colonial hold on these territories. In the 1950s the colonized nations vigorously asserted themselves and as a result colonialism began to decline. Consequently, these marginalized civilizations resisted to colonial exploitation and subjugation. The western ideology in the last few centuries has shown an additional existential interest in Indian religion, art, culture and philosophy.Colonialism as a state of mind remains even after the formal ending of the British Raj as the ideology of Indian people is still triumphant in past. It still haunts the present and the post-colonial natives try to escape from the past. Now these natives want to createa space for themselves. The oppressed subjects of the post-colonial world try to get rid of hangover of the colonial past and thus want to realize the present world themselves. The oppressed subjects of the colonial world were treated cruelly and exploited by the imperial structures of power. The present paper tries to critically explore hegemonic power structures in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children.

Reflecting a Diaspora: In-between Whitework and Indigo

Homi Bhabha’s “third space” theory provides a framework for deconstructing identity and creating new forms of expression in a space considered “in-between” cultures or boundaries. An Indian-embroidered English christening garment represents a multigenerational economic migration for a “self-portrait”-style investigation. This gown materializes a subjective narrative of the legacy of British colonization, postcolonization, and apartheid rule in South Africa. The stitch craft and associated cultural history of whitework reveal traces of the impact of class and colonial status barriers. In parallel, a trusted cotton indigo fabric iShweShwe1 is frequently worn in the post-apartheid, postcolonial nation. iShweShwe’s cross-cultural heritage includes links to German/Hungarian BlauDruk fabric and the English colonial cotton export trade. Cultural associations have crossed ethnicity barriers and the entrenched colonial color and class discriminatory practices. This preliminary research questions the experiences of the multigenerational migrants linked to the gown and the accompanying insider–outsider dislocated experience of a migrant influenced by colonial rule and decolonization in India and South Africa.

BRITISH CONSULATES IN PORT CITIES OF THE NORTHERN BLACK SEA AND AZOV REGION OF THE SECOND HALF OF THE 19TH - EARLY 20TH CENTURIES

Summary. The purpose of the research is to study the history of British consular offices in port cities of the Southern Ukraine at the times of the Russian Empire. The research methodology is based on search and comprehensive study of representative complexes of primarily sources on the history of the British consulates in the region, in particular, the annual consular reports to London. The scientific novelty: changes in the network of consulates of the British Empire and in the configuration of British consular districts in the region have been tracked; lists of consular representatives in each consular office have been composed; the specifics of the consuls’ status, functions and working conditions have been researched. Сonclusions. The development of the network of British consular offices in port cities of the Northern Black Sea and Azov region, which took place after the end of the Crimean War, unambiguously demonstrated the understanding by official London prospects of the deployment of economic ties with the region. During the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries the consular district of Odessa turned into the largest British consular district on the territory of the Russian Empire in number of consular offices. Forming the consular staff, the British Empire for a long time preferred appointing «non-trading» consuls, or «consul de carriere», which required considerably more money, but allowed consuls to focus on their professional duties, while the majority of consular representatives of other countries in the region were engaged in business. On the other hand, approaches of official London to the formation of the consular staff, financing consuls and the regulation of their activities had a number of disadvantages, which ultimately led to a revision of these approaches. However, the dynamics of development of economic relations between ports of the Northern Black Sea and Azov region and the British Empire was affected by a wide range of factors, and, despite the efforts of the British consuls, this dynamics was not always positive. So, the consuls only had to report about such a state of affairs, recalling with nostalgia «better times» of British trade in the region.

Fakery, forgery, and [Mis]representation during the English Civil War: dubious royal letters and contested diplomatic authority in the Russia trade, 1642-49

ABSTRACT The 1640s posed an existential threat to English trade interests in Russia. Tsar Aleksei’s accession to the throne in 1645 finally gave voice to native merchant opposition to the generously privileged Muscovy Company as the new government embarked on an aggressive protectionist course. By 1646, the Company in London and Moscow was pushing back against the stripping of its ancient right to duty-free trade. Resistance, however, was futile without the traditional support of the English monarch, which the London-based Muscovy Company failed to secure at this time. Instead, the Russia merchants found themselves under direct attack by the king himself as traitors. So would claim the royal envoy Luke Nightingale in a secret oral message to Aleksei, accompanied by letters from Charles of dubious provenance. These largely unexplored communications are fascinating for how they draw Russia into the dramatic orbit of the English Civil War. At the same time, they raise the possibility of documentary tampering and forgery in furtherance of personal and/or royalist objectives, while prompting consideration of how the collapse of royal authority in these years challenged merchants, trade, and diplomats.

Through the Backdoor: An Overview of the English East India Company’s Rise and Fall in Safavid Iran, 1616–40

In 1616, the English East India Company expanded its trade into Safavid Iran. The chief merchants in India hoped to acquire a significant share of the Iranian silk trade. After several difficult years in India, the English traders in Surat felt pressure to establish a solid foundation in Iran where they could redirect Iranian silk through Iran’s southern ports and onto Company ships for Europe. Despite Robert Sherley’s promise of wealth and a prosperous market for English cloth, many in the English camp, predominantly Sir Thomas Roe, objected to the silk trade on grounds that it was generally a risky venture. But several leading merchants dismissed Roe’s concerns and pursued the trade without his approval. After early indications that the venture had potential for success, the English silk trade quickly began to falter and finally ceased to exist by 1640. Although its demise was once described as the Company’s failure to produce a substantial quantity of purchasing power—eastern goods, precious metals, and English commodities—this paper explores an alternative explanation that suggests the Company’s failure in Iran was not exclusively the consequence of poor economics.

Emotions, Social Practices and the Changing Composition of Class, Race and Gender in the National Health Service, 1970–79: ‘Lively Discussion Ensued’

Abstract During the 1970s, Britain’s trade unions expanded into new areas of the economy, making considerable progress among the low-paid workers of the expanding welfare state. The Confederation of Health Service Employees (COHSE) and the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) both made huge strides recruiting women and particularly women of colour in the National Health Service, as the laundry, cleaning, catering and portering services of Britain’s hospitals became union strongholds. This article questions why the increased weight of feminized service work is so marginal in our idea of 1970s workplace activism and why it features so rarely in histories of British trade unionism, despite being one of the movement’s most significant growth areas. Drawing on NUPE’s photographic archive, I argue that by looking at the changing character of worker-activist visual culture in this period we can reinsert women and women of colour back into those histories. This is followed by a close reading of trade-union branch minutes which explores how women re-ordered the gendered hierarchy of both their male-dominated union and their hospital between 1970 and 1979, exercising new-found agency within the highly paternalist setting of the NHS.

The role of the TUC in significant industrial disputes: an historical critical overview

ABSTRACTHistorically the British Trades Union Congress’s (TUC) role in a significant number of major industrial disputes has been subject to both accusations of ‘betrayals’ and ‘sell-outs’ as well as more sympathetic accounts which emphasise the constraints faced by the TUC both in terms of their institutional role and their relationship with constituent unions. Drawing on evidence concerning the role of the TUC in significant disputes including the 1926 General Strike, the strike wave of 1972, 1975–8 Grunwick dispute, the 1978/9 ‘winter of discontent’, the 1984/5 miners’ strike, the 1986–7 News International strike and more recent examples, the paper highlights four constraints on the role of the TUC in relation to major disputes: their political loyalty to the Labour Party; an aversion to defying the law; the avoidance of appearing to challenge state power; and structural constraints to an extent inherent within trade union officialdom.

‘Scottish Exceptionalism?’ Trade Unions and the Anti-Apartheid Movement, 1976–1994

Since the end of apartheid in South Africa in 1994, historians have begun to explore the role played by the various Anti-Apartheid Movements (AAM) that developed globally in the latter half of the 20th century, although much more work remains to be done. While scholars have begun to explore the history of anti-apartheid opposition in Britain, there has not yet been any systematic study of this within a Scottish context. Such an omission overlooks the fact that activists in Scotland took the decision in 1976 to form the Scottish Committee of the Anti-Apartheid Movement (SAAM), thereby charting their own path within the global struggle to end apartheid. In addressing the question of ‘Scottish exceptionalism’, this article argues for the development of a distinctly Scottish scholarship pertaining to the history of anti-apartheid activism in Britain. It adopts a case-study approach, examining trade union involvement in the anti-apartheid struggle and asking whether this was uniform across Britain. Through a comparative analysis of the responses of both the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) and the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC), it is argued that, in terms of its support for the liberation movements within South Africa and the AAM in Britain and Scotland, the STUC was, for much of the second half of the 20th century, significantly more forthcoming than its southern counterpart in the cause of anti-apartheid.

Philip Harris (1926-2018)

Philip Harris, who died on 21 July 2018 at the age of ninety-one, was born in Woodford, Essex, and educated at St Anthony’s School in Woodford (1932-7), St Ignatius College in London (1937-44), Birkbeck College, London, and the Institute of Historical Research. In 1953 he was awarded an M.A. for a thesis on ‘English Trade with the Eastern Mediterranean in the Late 16th Century’. From 1947 onwards he was on the staff of the British Museum (of which the Library was then part), becoming Assistant Secretary in 1959, Deputy Superintendent of the Reading Room in 1963 and Deputy Keeper in 1966. He was in charge in turn of the Acquisitions, the English and North European, and the West European Branches of the Department of Printed Books. In 1998 he published his History of the British Museum Library, the fruit of more than ten years’ research after his ‘retirement’ in 1986.1 His final project there, almost complete when he died, was on the Old Royal Library donated to the Museum by George II.2 At his funeral the first reading was read by a former head of the Chinese Department there.

The Botany of Mungo Park’s Travels in Africa, 1795-1806

Mungo Park journeyed through West Africa during 1795-1797 and 1805-1806. The first journey was ostensibly purely geographical whereas the second journey was geographical plus the examination of British trade possibilities with the interior. His main brief was to discover the source and outlet of the River Niger. On both journeys he departed from the current Gambia, through Senegal and Mali the first time, and on to Niger and Nigeria the second. He was the first European to see the Niger, at Segou (Mali), and noted its eastward flow (prior speculation considered it flowed westwards). Botany was not in his brief but on both journeys he noted the vegetation and its use. He brought new facts to Britain’s intellectual establishment including describing the preparation of indigo dye and its use in spinning and weaving. His ‘discovery’ of the shea butter tree – given the specific epithet Butyrospermum parkii – is his outstanding contribution to botany. He also contributed to science the locust bean Parkia biglobosa and another indigenous multipurpose tree Pterocarpus erinaceus. Many of Park’s plants are important in regional agroforestry systems and continue to provide food and non wood forest products to the benefit of people and livestock.

Imperatives of Commodities Stockpiling in Nigeria

DOI : 10.7176/JRDM/52-04 Introduction Nigeria’s development has always hinged on its natural resources. The level of exploitation and degree of development of the resources have been playing and may likely to continue to play a central role in the economic, industrial and food security status and the wellbeing of the nation (Aribisala, 1993). Prior to independence, Nigeria depends on its forest resources for perspective planning for economic development. As far back as 1899, the perspective planning for economic development was to exploit the forest resources (Adeyoju, 1975). The export revenue from forestry grows at 1%, 8% and 28.8% between 1950-1960, 1960 - 1970 and 1970 - 1980 respectively (Aribisala, 1993). At the time of independence, Nigeria depended on export of agricultural products such as cocoa, cotton, groundnut, palm oil, palm kernel, various timber species, hides and skin, processed tin ore for its foreign exchange. The development of these resources was vigorously pursued by the British trading firms and this increased agricultural production and productivity, enthrone sustainable forest resources management principles and ensure optimal mineral development practices in order to aid optimisation of export of these commodities. In the minerals sector, minerals such as tin, columbite, and coal constitute major exported commodities and intensification of exploitation activities led to discovery of oil in the 1950’s and its exploitation from Oloibiri, Rivers State in 1956. The high price commanded by oil compared to other commodities in the international market brought oil to the forefront of exported commodities, and turned farming and related activities into lacklustre activities. The petrodollars led to initiation of policies such as import substitution through the First National Development Plan, 1962 – 1968; and in 1970 – 1974; the Second Development Plan which highlighted the weakness of the import substitution strategy such as limited markets which do not allow for spread of industries, nor-allow for intermediate or capital funds (Aribisala, 1993). These made government to shift policy forms to public sector led industrialisation, and, the establishment of big linkage industries such as Pulp and Paper Mills, Fertilizer Plants, Salt Refinery, etc. Although, these postponed the restructuring and transformation necessary to make the Nigerian economy self-reliant and self-sustaining, it created the impetus for local sourcing of industrial inputs. The road to focus on the development of local industrial raw materials became imperative due to the vagaries in oil prices as the low price of oil in the international markets make importation of finished and semi-finished raw materials too expensive to the industrialisation strategy and forced the closure of many industries. Since 1980’s to the present, the nation has tossed with a privatisation scheme and a holistic programme for the development of local raw materials for use in the manufacturing sector of the economy. These led to establishment of government agencies such as the Raw Materials Research and Development Council in 1987 and a host of others. It is imperative to stress that the dependence of the nation on commodity export and industrial processing has had its toll on optimal resource availability locally. Despite government’s effort to promote industrial utilisation of locally available raw materials and the establishment of a number of presidential committees for commodities development, capacity utilisation is still low across most industries. Likewise efforts being made to promote food availability, economic and physical access to food are still facing several constraints, making it mandatory to put in place strategies that would promote improved capacity utilisation in the industries and to enhance food availability in the country.

The Commonwealth: a panacea for the UK’s post-Brexit trade ills?

ABSTRACTThe central tenet of this article is that geography is the dominant factor in determining trade flows. British accession to the EEC in 1973 did not cause a discernible break in export trends already visible. As a complement to the existing literature on prospects for post-Brexit trade, we consider in-depth case-studies to ascertain the extent to which a reorientation of UK trade flows towards the Commonwealth might be feasible. We consider Nigeria and India as representatives of fast-growing economies with large populations in addition to Australia and Canada as examples of more mature economies. In each case, substantial barriers towards a substantive improvement in export conditions remain. We find that plans to ‘replace’ EU trade with that from the Commonwealth are problematic. As such, this article seeks to deepen our practical understanding of barriers to trade and explain why, ultimately, geography trumps history in determining British trade flows and will continue to do so, irrespective of the UK’s future relationship with the EU.