The sterling area (or sterling bloc, legally scheduled territories) was a group of countries that either pegged their currencies to the pound sterling, or actually used the pound as their own currency. The area began to appear informally during the early 1930s, after the pound had left the gold standard in 1931, with the result that a number of currencies of countries that historically had performed a large amount of their trade in sterling were pegged to sterling instead of to gold. A large number of these countries were part of the British Empire; however, a significant minority were not.