Approaches to depoliticisation have tended to focus on its use as a domestic strategy. The purpose of depoliticisation, whether discourse-, rule-, or institution-based, is to distance or limit the political character of a particular issue or policy. Where the literature on depoliticisation tends to be lacking is in its international role. This paper seeks to explore how imperialist policies, that is policies intended to dominate one state by another, have been depoliticized by being channeled through technically- managed or apparently economic institutions. The paper situates an account of depoliticisation in terms of the nature of global capitalist society, and seeks to explore how imperial strategy was depoliticized through the Sterling Area. The paper looks at an episode in British-Malayan relations in which the apolitical character of the Sterling Area is brought into question. The purpose of this strategy of depoliticisation, as with its domestic instances, is to remove accountability from state managers, provide them with greater governing autonomy and to limit social instability, while at the same time trying to remove barriers for capital accumulation on a global scale.