This book offers a detailed account, based on primary source materials from Britain, Canada, and Australia, of the process by which the Empire settlement programme and the Ottawa Agreements were devised. It also traces the effects of both, placing them in the general contexts of British economic policy-making, imperial economic diplomacy and the contemporary concern with economic imperialism. Its special merits are twofold: a solid base in the documents and a development of the historical arguments and assessments with the aid of economic analysis. It should appeal to anyone who is interested in British political and economic history, or in Commonwealth history, especially in the twentieth century.