The Crown Colony class belonged to a continuous Royal Navy building program in which successive designs entered production quickly. Although these cruisers were ordered in 1937 and construction began in 1938, the international situation in 1936 supplied their immediate background. George V died, Germany remilitarized the Rhineland, the Spanish Civil War began, and Italy annexed Ethiopia. East Asia experienced the February 26 coup attempt, the Anti-Comintern Pact, the Xi'an Incident, and a major Chinese famine, while Stalin began the Great Purge. Naval disarmament nevertheless remained a political objective, despite the growing difficulty of assuming that other governments shared the same restraint.
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The unstable 1936 setting behind the Crown Colony class
The cruisers took shape amid rapid rearmament, treaty diplomacy, and worsening crises in Europe and East Asia.