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British Empire Economic Conference

1932 meeting in Ottawa, Canada

Field	Value
summit_name	1932 British Empire Economic Conference
other_titles	Imperial Economic Conference
country	Canada Canada
date	21 July 1932–
18 August 1932
venues	House of Commons chamber, Parliament Hill
cities	Ottawa
participants	9
heads_of_state_label	Heads of State or Government
chairperson	R. B. Bennett
(Canadian Prime Minister)
follows	1930
precedes	1937
keypoints	Imperial preference, tariffs, monetary standards

18 August 1932 (Canadian Prime Minister)

Postage stamp, Canada, 1932: commemorative overprint for Ottawa Conference.

The British Empire Economic Conference (also known as the Imperial Economic Conference or Ottawa Conference) was a 1932 conference of British colonies and dominions held to discuss the Great Depression. It was held between 21 July and 20 August in Ottawa.

The conference saw the group admit the failure of the gold standard and abandon attempts to return to it. The meeting also worked to establish a zone of limited tariffs within the British Empire, but with high tariffs with the rest of the world. This was called "Imperial preference" or "Empire Free-Trade" on the principle of "home producers first, empire producers second, and foreign producers last". The result of the conference was a series of bilateral agreements that would last for at least 5 years. This abandonment of open free trade led to a split in the British National Government coalition: the Official Liberals under Herbert Samuel left the Government, but the National Liberals under Sir John Simon remained.

The conference was especially notable for its adoption of Keynesian ideas such as lowering interest rates, increasing the money supply, and expanding government spending.

According to a 2024 study, the impact of the agreement on Canada was limited, as Canada already had a highly protectionist trade policy.

Heads of delegations

The conference was hosted by the Governor General of Canada, The Earl of Bessborough, representing King George V and included the Prime Ministers and other leaders of the Empire and members of their respective cabinets:

Nation	Name	Portfolio
	R. B. Bennett	Prime Minister (Chairman)
	Stanley Bruce	Assistant Treasurer of Australia
British Raj	Sir Atul Chandra Chatterjee	Viceroy's representative
	Seán T. O'Kelly	Vice-President
Newfoundland Newfoundland	Frederick C. Alderdice	Prime Minister
	Gordon Coates	Minister of Public Works, Minister in charge of Unemployment
	Howard Unwin Moffat	Prime Minister
South Africa South Africa	Nicolaas Havenga	Finance Minister
	Stanley Baldwin	Lord President of the Council

Notes

Sources

British Empire Economic Conference, Time magazine, 25 July 1932
Barry Eichengreen and Douglas A. Irwin, "Trade blocs, currency blocs and the reorientation of world trade in the 1930s", Journal of International Economics, Volume 38, Issues 1–2, February 1995, Pages 1–24
Robert A. MacKay, "Imperial Economics at Ottawa", Pacific Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 10 (Oct. 1932), pp. 873–885
Maxwell Slutz Stewart, The Ottawa conference, Foreign Policy Association, incorporated, 1932
Potter, Pitman B. (1932). "The British Imperial Economic Conference". American Journal of International Law. 26 (4): 811–813.

References

"Imperial Economic Conference". Encyclopædia Britannica.
Lampe, Markus. (2024). "The Empire project: Trade policy in interwar Canada". Journal of International Economics.

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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