Poverty and Wealth:
Britains position as workshop and banker of the world was seen as almost paradoxical to what was going on in society as the time. There was the striking contrast between the waxing industrial wealth of the country as a whole and the continuing poverty of the majority of its inhabitants. It was also true that there was no general diffusion of wealth at all comparable with its quantitative increase. The economic condition of the farm tenants and agricultural workers grew steadily worse, most owned no property, had no permanent homes, and were expected to work long hours for subsistence wages, while many were on the verge of starvation.
Economy:
Great Britain was the leading commercial and industrial country, with the value of its foreign commerce steadily rising throughout the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Between 1890 and 1910 Britains foreign earnings almost doubled to 1,085 million pounds sterling. London became was the greatest commercial port in the world, and Liverpool did the greatest exporting business. Moreover the bulk of the worlds carrying trade, was in Britains hands and it showed similar gains.
Britain was the wealthiest country in the world, with the largest accumulations of capital at home and the largest investments abroad. Its domestic wealth was roughly estimated at 14,000 million pounds sterling in 1910 (a figure that had greatly more than doubled in the past 45 years). Britain was the chief lending country in the world and the foremost exporter of capital. By 1913 its external investments aggregated at least 3760 million pounds sterling. As a result annual earning from across the world flowed to Britain in the form of interest on stocks and bonds. London was the unquestionable financial capital of the world, the pivot of the world’s money, banking and stock exchange.
Imperialism:
The decade between 1900 and 1910 witnessed an extraordinary advance in nationalism and imperialism. It was a time when economic-and imperial-rivalry was fast developing among the Great Powers, when Great Britain was feeling acutely the industrial completion of Germany and the United States and was becoming alarmed by the ambitious projects of Russia in Asia, France in Africa, and Germany in the Near East and in the Pacific.
Joseph Chamberlain became concerned that there was a progressive loosening of ties, economic and political, between the mother country and her colonies. He called upon the colonies to share with the mother country in the maintenance of armaments sufficient to assure the unity and integrity of the Empire as a whole. “Imperial preference”, “imperial defence” and “imperial conference” were convenient slogans for ideas, which were closely intertwined in Chamberlain’s mind, and among these, the substitution by Great Britain of tariff protection for free trade was central.
