International education has long existed, but between the end of the Second World War and the late twentieth century it was largely a matter of aid and scholarships. How did the current market for international education come about? It was related to the ‘massification’ of tertiary education, and, no doubt, to a diminution in the sense of post-imperial obligation. Was it also the result of a new approach to education, even a new ideology? Or was it rather the result of series of pragmatic decisions, sometimes with unintended consequences, which ideological endorsement followed rather than preceded? This paper explores the British case through an examination of records of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department of Education and Science. It is one of a number of studies that seek to deepen the understanding of an essentially novel development by placing it in an historical context.