This text illuminates British imperial policy after World War II in the context of economic policy and suggests a novel argument about the end of the British empire. Economic discrimination in the empire in the late 1940s and early 1950s sustained Britain's recovery, when political control in the colonies was feasible. Subsequently, economic liberalization and the move towards financial cosmopolitanism, combined with rising constraints for economic and political management in the colonies, loosened and ultimately severed Britain's imperial link.