The ambiguities of free trade

Abstract

Free trade and the Victorian age Free trade is one of the defining notions of nineteenth-century Britain. It is as Victorian as the whatnot, the piano or self-help. Of course, historians no longer treat free trade as the economic calling card of the industrial bourgeoisie. Yet until quite recently the idea that the urban middle class marched onto the political stage with the repeal of the protectionist corn laws in 1846 lurked close to the surface of historical interpretation. Few historians would now argue that class analysis is the best way to understand the repeal of the corn laws and the arrival of free trade in 1846, although the idea has not entirely died out in other sectors of the academic world. More important in contemporary interpretations of free trade is its cultural dimension, the close relationship it bore to the evangelical religion that was believed and practiced by many of its most prominent advocates in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, whatever the interpretive nuance, in nineteenth-century history, 1846 is a key date which is taken to mark a genuine passage from one economic regime to another. This chapter seeks to problematize that assumption. What was the content of free trade; what did it mean? To ask these questions is to encounter ambiguity and uncertainty. Free trade as both idea and policy defies straightforward treatment. Using certain economic measurements it can be argued that Britain's distinctive nineteenth-century image as a low-tariff nation is a chimera. If tariffs are measured as a percentage of the value of imports, Britain after 1846 was more protectionist than France.