David Thackeray has written an authoritative and compelling account of the emergence, growth, and decline of the “British World”; that is, the networks of trade and communication between the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa, between the late nineteenth century and the 1970s. The interconnected networks that existed between governments, business and commercial interests, and the general public, provide the fundamental infrastructure around which Thackeray bases Forging a British World of Trade: Culture, Ethnicity, and Market in the Empire-Commonwealth, 1880–1975. It is entirely appropriate that in the introduction, Thackeray contrasts the perception of the Commonwealth's importance to UK trade with the reality: with the exception of a few decades, between the 1870s and the Brexit vote of 2016, continental Europe was the United Kingdom's biggest trading partner. In successive chapters he then explains the interaction between tariff reform and the economic prospects of the Dominions prior to 1914; the emergence of the League of Nations to challenge the United Kingdom's hegemony in international economic and political affairs during the interwar period; the conflict between promoting empire trade when the Dominions—especially Canada, and India—sought to foster their own industries during the 1930s; how decolonization not only raised searching questions about the raison d'etre for established business and political networks, but also transformed the Commonwealth into a multiracial body; the importance of mass media to communicate “buy national” messages in the 1950s and 1960; and how the United Kingdom's membership of the European Economic Community was the death knell for the economic importance of UK–Commonwealth relations, aptly signaled by the decision of UK ministers in 1961 to restrict “British” exclusively to the United Kingdom rather than to the wider Commonwealth.

One of the main strengths of Thackeray's analysis is his ability to present a multifocal perspective of the British world: each chapter blends the perceptions of UK and Dominion actors as they tried to address a multitude of cultural, economic, and political issues that membership of this World entailed. To support the analysis, Thackeray draws on a diverse range of archives in Australia, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and the United States, complemented by a comprehensive range of official and trade publications and newspapers.

Thackeray is particularly competent at explaining how contested concepts of the British world manifested themselves. This, in turn, raises profound questions: To what extent was it possible for the Dominions to promote their own economic interests without jeopardizing the unity of the empire? And did the Dominions differentiate the benefits of belonging to the empire according to cultural, economic, or political criteria? This conflict was exemplified by the launching of a Made in Australia campaign in 1904, a national buying campaign initiated by the South African Manufacturers Association in 1908, and the Buy Indian campaign of the 1930s. Such examples demonstrate dissonance between governments on the one hand, and business and consumer interests, on the other hand. New Zealand appears to have been the exception because of its substantially bigger dependence on the UK market.

It becomes apparent in later chapters that whatever alignment previously existed between UK and Dominion economic interests evaporated rapidly after 1945. The establishment of full sovereignty in the former Dominions, together with broader decolonization, meant that the connected identities in the British world became contested identities in a new world order. This new environment was characterized by demotion in the United Kingdom's international economic standing, the marginalization of the Commonwealth, and the formation of substantially more powerful—and global—organizations, such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Thackeray is at his best when he simultaneously explains the United Kingdom's decline during the 1970s with the contemporaneous uncertainties confronting Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa. The collapse of the British world, and the inability of the United Kingdom to compete successfully in world markets, meant the United Kingdom appears to have had no option but to accede to the European Economic Community. Conversely, the same trends required the former Dominions to jettison, finally and irrevocably, any belief that economic salvation was to be found by focusing on the UK market. For this reviewer, and presumably for Thackeray, it is ironic—and possibly very mischievous—to suggest that the brouhaha surrounding Brexit was preceded 70–80 years ago, when the Dominions, which had become newly independent, began to chart their own economic fortunes.

Thackeray sought to explore how successive and varied attempts to promote a British world converged, and then conflicted, with alternative forms of trade collaboration. He has succeeded admirably. Forging a British World of Trade provides a definitive discussion of the complex interplay between a diverse range of cultural, economic, political, and social factors that explain the evolution of the British world between the late nineteenth century and the 1970s. Thackeray is to be congratulated. Many historians, whatever their hue, will be in his debt.