V Further objections to an “imperialism of free trade” 1830–60

Abstract

Abstract I The “Imperialism of Free Trade”, a phrase first formulated in detail nearly 20 years ago, has now passed into the historian's vocabulary as a convenient portmanteau description of British overseas expansion in the middle decades of the 19th century. In their well-known article in the Economic History Review (1953)1 John Gallagher ' Ronald Robinson, “The imperialism of free trade”, Economic History Review, 6(1), 1953, pp 1–15 John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, unsatisfied with the simplistic view then current of mid-Victorian anti-imperialism, set out to establish a continuity in British attitudes to the extension of trade and control, which they identified under a general title: “The Imperlialism of Free Trade”. They hoped to detect common factors in a century of diverse overseas activity, to explain the existence and maintenance of British control both by “formal” and by “informal” means. They saw a grand design, associated more particularly with such names as Canning and Palmerston, for the establishment of British paramountcy, to which the efforts of mid- and late-Victorians alike were directed. These efforts were more successful in some areas than in others, and formal annexation tended to replace informal control as the century progressed. But a continuity existed in the development of British interests and ambitions overseas: