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"The Misremembered Empire". Excellent article by @DEHEdgerton on the use and abuse of empire in the Brexit debate. members.tortoisemedia.com/2019/04/25/the…
As Edgerton shows, Europe was always Britain's most important market, aside from an anomalous and uncomfortable period after WW2. "The idea that the UK was part of an essentially imperial, or global, economy until it was forced into the EEC is quite wrong". 
"Exports were also European and global, more than imperial. ... Britain was the Saudi Arabia of 1900 – the largest exporter of energy on earth till 1939". The biggest markets for its coal before 1914 were France, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Scandinavia and Germany.
However, casting "Brexit as imperialism" is also a "serious misreading" of history. As @DEHEdgerton argues, the Brexit campaign was a curious mix of "radical liberalism, dreaming of a return to unilateral free trade", & an economic nationalism once found mainly on the left.
As I've argued elsewhere, the great power fantasies of some leading Brexiteers rarely have much to do with empire. The full article is here and well worth reading: members.tortoisemedia.com/2019/04/25/the…
