Creating British Global Leadership: The Liberal Trading Community from 1750 to 1792

Daniel J Whiteneck

doi:10.5195/jwsr.1998.157

Abstract

This paper explores the process by which Great Britain rose to a position of global leadership in the 1800s. It examines the critical period from 1750 to 1792 when Great Britain moved from global leadership based on colonial/mercantile power to leadership based on industrial/commercial power. I hypothesize that the roots of the Pax Britannica of 1815-1873 have their source in the emerging liberal trading community created by the British in the fifty years before the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. This coalition of states was created around a dominant new idea (economic liberalism) based in the distribution of positive benefits from inclusion in the community, and intended to provide an innovative solution to the problems of international political economy created by the burgeoning industrial revolution. The community was created through the actions of successive British governments throughout the period, and served as the basis for the British-led coalitions which emerged victorious from the global wars of 1792 to 1815. This case study helps answer important questions about how Great Britain was able to move from one period of global leadership to another, and on a more general level provides some insights into the role coalition-building plays in attaining and exercising global power.

Highlights

This paper explores the process by which Great Britain rose to a position of global leadership in the 1800s
The shift from a mercantile-based system to the modern liberal trading system of the 19th Century was not to be completed until 1846 with the Peel government's repeal of the Corn Laws; the outlines of that system, including increasingly liberal duties and rights of merchants, reciprocity between trading partners, and the use of the 'most-favored-nation' principle as a basis for trading arrangements, can be glimpsed in the trading relations between Britain and her European partners from about 1750 to 1792. This period coincided with the beginning of the industrial revolution, the waning of British mercantile power in the face of the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and ended with the outbreak of the global wars which lasted from 1792 to 1815, in which the British-led coalitions defeated French attempts to displace Great Britain as the predominant global power
An important question in the study of the history of the world political system and international relations is naturally asked: how did one state manage to succeed itself as the global leader in two distinct historical periods? how did Great Britain manage the transition from global leadership during an era of "colonial-mcrcantilism" to leadership of a world system based on "commercial-capitalism"?

Summary

Unfavorable

It shows that they had a trade surplus with only seven out of twelve European trading partn ers. Liberalized arrangements had been made with Spain, Portugal, Russia, Holland, the Austrian Netherlands, and the Italian States

Country

Stationary

Findings

Reciprocity