In 1920–24, Queensland was unable to borrow in London because of a dispute between British pastoral companies and the state’s Labor government. Bernie Schedvin published a ground-breaking article about the loans affair in 1971, but since then historians have added little, including Tom Cochrane, whose Blockade: The Queensland Loans Affair (1989) focused on the episode’s long-term significance for the Labor Party in Queensland itself. This paper argues for scaling-up in two important respects. First, a full study of the affair is long overdue. The challenge posed by scale here is the wide geographical dispersion of the relevant archival sources. Second, the paper makes the case for a scaling up of ambition in our explanations of the affair’s significance. From the 1890s, British businessmen and investors, like their colonial counterparts, traversed a new political landscape in Australia. How they responded was refracted through the insecurities of the upper-middle class in the period about organised labour and the security of property. Paradoxically, while an apparent victory for British capital, the affair was a dead end for the businessmen involved. Yet seen as part of a story beginning in the 1890s, it sheds fresh light on how they adjusted to the new Australia.