Trade networks after empire

A continuing web of overseas territories, Commonwealth relationships, and trade routes survived decolonisation, with the Falklands and Pitcairn among Britain's remaining possessions. Formal empire had ended, but commercial and historical connections still ran through the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, India, and Southeast Asia. Successive governments accepted a smaller defence role because US power underwrote an international system whose treaties, legal expectations, and trade patterns broadly suited British interests. In that arrangement, British capability became a supplement to security supplied on a much larger scale by the United States. The caveat is that this bargain works only while Washington continues to provide that security and uphold a system another dominant power might rewrite around different interests.