Britain's Trade Research Articles

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:D. Broughton and M. Donovan (eds),Changing Party Systems in Western EuropeL. Moore, Britain's Trade and Economic Structure: The Impact ofthe European UnionR. Dehousse, The European Court of Justice: The Politics of Judicial IntegrationJ. Peterson and M. Sharp, Technology Policy in the European UnionC. M. Radaelli, Technocracy in the European UnionE. Tannam, Cross‐Border Cooperation in the Republic of Ireland and Northern IrelandJ. McCormick, Understanding the European Union: A Concise IntroductionD. A. Dyker (ed), The European EconomyP. J. Anderson and A. Weymouth, Insulting the Public? The British Press and the European UnionC. Lord, Democracy in the European UnionT. Banchoff and M. P. Smith (eds), Legitimacy and the European Union: The Contested PolityT. Hartley, Constitutional Problems of the European UnionC. Rhodes (ed), The European Union in the World CommunityM‐S. Schulze, Western Europe: Economic and Social Change Since 1945S.K.Schmidt, Liberalisierung in Europa: Die Rolle der Europäischen KommissionF. Arritenbrink, The Democratic Accountability of Central Banks: A Comparative Study of the European Central BankDeutsche Bundesbank (ed), Fifty Years of the Deutsche Mark: Central Bank and the Currency in Germany since 1948T. Pedersen, Germany, France and the Integration of Europe: A Realist InterpretationJ. AndersonGerman Unification and the Union of Europe: The Domestic Politics of Integration PolicyR. Martin, The Regional Dimension in European Public Policy: Convergence or DivergenceM. Virtanen, Market Dominance‐related Competition Policy: An Eclectic Theory and Analysis of Policy Evolution

Presidential Address: Britain and the World in the Eighteenth Century: I, Reshaping the Empire

By the end of the eighteenth century Britain was a world power on a scale that none of her European rivals could match. Not only did she rule a great empire, but the reach of expeditionary forces from either Britain itself or from British India stretched from the River Plate to the Moluccas in eastern Indonesia. Britain's overseas trade had developed a strongly global orientation: she was die leading distributor of tropical produce diroughout die world and in the last years of the century about four-fifths of her exports were going outside Europe. Britain was at die centre of inter-continental movements of people, not only exporting her own population but shipping almost as many Africans across the Atantic during die eighteenth century as all the other carriers put together. It is not surprising therefore that British historians have searched for the qualities that marked out eighteeth-century Britain's exceptionalism on a world stage. Notable books have stressed, not only the dynamism of die British economy, but developments such as the rise of Britain's ‘fiscal-military state’ or die forging of a sense of British national identity behind war and empire overseas.

The business of death: Britain's arms trade at home and abroad

The business of death: Britain's arms trade at home and abroad

The North American Trajectory: Cultural, Economic, and Political Ties among the United States, Canada, and Mexico. By Ronald F. Inglehart, Neil Nevitte, and Miguel Basañez. New York: Aldine de Gruyter Press, 1996. 198p. $40.95 cloth, $19.95 paper. - Risking Free Trade: The Politics of Trade in Britain, Canada, Mexico and the United States. By Michael Lusztig. Pittsburgh, PA: University of

The North American Trajectory: Cultural, Economic, and Political Ties among the United States, Canada, and Mexico. By Ronald F. Inglehart, Neil Nevitte, and Miguel Basañez. New York: Aldine de Gruyter Press, 1996. 198p. 19.95 paper. - Risking Free Trade: The Politics of Trade in Britain, Canada, Mexico and the United States. By Michael Lusztig. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996. 180p. 22.95 paper. - Volume 92 Issue 1

Thinking the Unthinkable: British and American Naval Strategies for an Anglo-American War, 1918–1931

a friendly meeting between the British ambassador to the United States, Sir Esme Howard, and the US secretary of commerce, Herbert Hoover, in July 1927, an unusual conversation took place. The two men had previously agreed that public opinion in both Britain and the United States needed to be convinced of the 'absurdity of contemplating the possibility of war between the United States and the British Empire'. When they met over lunch to make plans, however, their conversation turned to the strategies each side would adopt in the event of war. Hoover predicted that, as Canada would declare its neutrality, the United States would limit its offensive strategy to trying to cut off Britain's transatlantic trade, to which Howard replied that Britain would try to do the same for the United States. Both men assumed that 'the battle fleets of neither country would cross the Atlantic in view of the extreme risk attaching to the loss of capital ships.'1 These were the views of amateur strategists. Naval officers on both sides of the Atlantic held entirely different ideas during the inter-war period about the correct strategy in an Anglo-American war. US war plans drawn up during Hoover's own presidency between 1929 and 1933, for example, were framed on the assumption that as Canada would be a belligerent, naval operations would be strategically defensive, subordinated to an overland invasion of Canada. Meanwhile, in Britain, the navy did plan to send a battle fleet across the Atlantic.

Risking Free Trade: The Politics of Trade in Britain, Canada, Mexico, and the United StatesMichael Lusztig Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996, pp. x, 180

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Risking free trade: the politics of trade in Britain, Canada, Mexico, and the United States

Titans or Behemoths: The Multilateral Development Banks, volume 5, by Roy Culpeper (Ottawa: North-South Institute, 1997, xx, 191pp).Risking Free Trade: The Politics of Trade in Britain, Canada, Mexico, and the United States by Michael Lusztig (Pittsburgh PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996, x, 180pp).Who Elected the Bankers? Surveillance and Control in the World Economy by Louis W. Pauly (London and Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1997, XIV, 184pp, US$25.00).The New World Order in International Finance, edited by Geoffrey R.D. Underhill (New York: St Martin's, 1997, XVII, 331pp, US$49.95).The accelerated integration of the world economy and its impact on citizens, on the ability to govern, and on the present structure of international organizations have led to a plethora of studies in most social science disciplines. Historians point out that capital and trade reached similar levels of integration in the decades leading up to the first world war. However, the speed at which change is taking place today is unprecedented. Several issues have been explored in depth, including the impact of liberalized trade on wages and unemployment of blue collar workers in industrial countries; of freer trade and capital flows on the environment; of capital flows on the ability of states to conduct their own monetary, fiscal, and social policies. There are also analyses of or prescriptions for the national and international regulatory regimes, if any, that are necessary in the new global environment. Regrettably, and as always, there is little communication among scholars of various disciplines.The books under review here make important contributions to the growing literature and can be read with interest regardless of the disciplinary background of the reader. With some exceptions, annoying jargon is kept to a minimum. Three of the books deal with international lending and finance, but I will begin with the fourth.Lusztig's exploration of the question of why countries liberalize trade is not particularly interesting to a traditionally trained economist because the answer is obvious. Countries act in that manner because it is in their interest to do so. Most introductory economics textbooks devote a chapter to the benefits of free trade by explaining comparative advantage: if each country produces and exports those products which it produces relatively efficiently, the world and each country will be better off in the sense that the value of output and, therefore, total income (gross domestic product) will increase. However, most of them by-pass the problem of trade liberalization: the way it creates gainers and losers in each country and the unhappiness of workers in those industries which are losing their protection at the prospect of becoming unemployed or of being paid less. The main beneficiaries are consumers and resources employed in the export industries. While in theory the gainers compensate the losers, in reality this does not often happen. The losers are more likely to distrust and therefore attempt to block any move towards free trade. Democratic governments, which have to be re-elected, are sensitive to such pressures. Economists have begun to look seriously at these problems, most promisingly through a transaction cost approach focussing on impediments to the development of efficient markets.(f.1)Lusztig takes a political science approach, arguing that free trade may be achieved as a by-product of a pursuit of other objectives or a means to their realization. In a sense free trade may be one of the bargaining chips thrown in to achieve something else. He argues that existing theories ignore this possibility.In Lusztig's model, trade liberalization refers only to policies which remove direct import barriers affecting at least one-third of total trade volume - an arbitrary figure which he does not defend - and which constitute clear departures from past policies and are politically controversial. …

The Structural Change of Retail Trade in Britain since the 1980's

The Structural Change of Retail Trade in Britain since the 1980's

The Antiquarian Book Trade in Britain 1695—1830: The Use of Auction and Booksellers' Catalogues

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Antiquarian Book Trade in Britain 1695—1830: The Use of Auction and Booksellers' CataloguesRichard LandonRichard Landon Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America Volume 89, Number 4DECEMBER 1995BOOK CATALOGUES, TODAY AND TOMORROW: REPORTS AND PRESENTATIONS FROM THE 1995 BSA CONFERENCE Published for the Bibliographical Society of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/pbsa.89.4.24304319 Views: 10Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref COPYRIGHT © 1995 THE BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICAPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Michael F. Suarez, SJ, Michael L. Turner The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, (Sep 2010).https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521810173

British Book Trade Index: development and progress

Provides a brief outline of the background of British Book Trade History studies as an introduction to the establishment of the British Book Trade Index within the relevant library of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. This is a computerized index of the names and brief biographical and trade details of all those who worked in the book trade in England and Wales, starting work prior to 1851. Discusses the conduct and present state of the project, as well as its uses.

British trade union responses to European integration

Abstract Since 1988, Britain's largest trade unions have developed a response to European integration that union officials often call a ‘twin track approach’. First, trade unions increasingly lobby the EC political institutions in an attempt to influence the EC policy‐making process. Second, an ‘industrial strategy’ has been developed that involves the building of closer links between European trade unions in an attempt to pursue common interests, gain influence in multinational companies, and initiate cross‐European collective bargaining. Britain's largest trade unions have made great strides towards ‘Europeanizing’ their activities. However, at present, they remain essentially national organizations that give their allegiance to their members within the nation state, rather than trade union members throughout the European Community.

Cape verde, Madeira and Britain's trade to Africa, 1698–1740

(1994). Cape verde, Madeira and Britain's trade to Africa, 1698–1740. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History: Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 1-15.

Free Trade and Protection in Nineteenth-Century Britain and France Revisited: A Comment on Nye

In a recent article in this JOURNAL, John V. Nye disputed the that Britain was a paragon of free trade and France a practitioner of protection in the nineteenth century.' Nye's case is based primarily on figures for tariff revenue as a percentage of the value of imports, calculated using various weights. These figures, as Nye interprets them, suggest that France's trade regime was more liberal than that of Great Britain throughout most of the nineteenth century . . . British average tariff levels did not compare favorably with those of France till the 1880s and were not substantially lower for much of the time.2 In this comment I argue that the rate of tariff revenue is an inadequate and potentially misleading indicator of whether a country's commercial policy tends toward free trade or protection. In examining the structure of Britain's tariff in the second half of the nineteenth century, when those problems were particularly acute, I found that the tariff was carefully constructed to avoid protecting domestic producers. A cursory examination of French policy, by contrast, indicates that domestic producers were protected by substantial tariff barriers. In figure 1 of his article, Nye presented evidence on tariff revenue as a percentage of the total value of imports in Britain and France over the course of the nineteenth century. In the first half of the century, the average rate of tariff revenue appears initially to be much higher but to decline more rapidly in Britain than in France, until the rates converge in the two countries at about 5 to 10 percent around the 1860s. In the second half-century, the rates remain roughly stable at this level until the end of the century. Taking these tariff revenue measures as a proxy for average tariff levels in the two countries, Nye judged France to have been equally as liberal in its commercial policy as Britain was over the course of the nineteenth century, bringing into question what he believes to be the traditional view on the matter. Given these figures for the first half of the century, Nye asked, why have economic historians that Britain was the solitary free trader in the early to midnineteenth century?''3 This questioning of the conventional wisdom is curious, because no scholar of the period has disputed the fact that Britain's commercial policy was quite protectionist prior to the 1840s. What is disputable is using the rate of tariff revenue as the sole metric by which to rank-order two countries in terms of the liberality of their commercial policy, as Nye did when he concluded that there is little evidence that Britain's trade was substantially more open than that of France. . . . France's trade regime was more liberal than that of Great Britain.' 4 That rates of tariff revenue were higher in Britain than in France for some decades does not mean a priori that Britain was less open to trade than France: those data alone are not revealing about nominal or

Air Power and the Battle of the Atlantic 1939-45

It is generally accepted in most modern works on the Battle of the Atlantic during the second world war that technology and operational research were instrumental in allowing the Royal Air Force to contribute to the defeat of the U-boat menace, thus ensuring the security of Britain's trade routes and sea communications. Without the advances made in airborne offensive and detection technologies, it is argued, the Battle of the Atlantic would have been lost and with it the war as a whole.

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN GEOGRAPHY'S CONTRIBUTION TO CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION IN ENGLAND IN THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURY

The relationship between geography and education for citizenship has for long been associated with one of the subject's claims for a place in the curriculum. Suggestions that geography should be included in the school curriculum, for example, were made in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on the grounds of the increase in Britain's international and overseas trade coupled with the gradual development of a middle class of merchants demanding greater knowledge of the world. In other words, it was claimed that knowing and understanding of other parts of the world served a citizenship end. However, there was no evidence that these counsels were ever widely put into practice. How could geography contribute to citizenship education if it was not part of the curriculum in school? The answer was obviously that it had to secure a place in the curriculum first. In retrospect its success in gaining a place in the curriculum was arguably partly due to its contribution to citizenship education. The achievement b...

Britain, the European Community, and the Centralisation of Production: Theory and Evidence, Freight Movements

The rapid growth in Britain's trading relationships with Europe in the postwar period is often interpreted to imply a significant shift in the relative advantages of locations in the southeastern part of the country. Such a shift ought to be evident in the pattern of traffic through the ports. At the aggregate level, there has indeed been some shift in the relative importance of ports in favour of the southeast. Closer inspection shows, however, a complex pattern of change, in which port location is only one factor. The evidence of the port data, when considered in conjunction with evidence on transport costs and other factors, suggests that theories of the centralisation of production miss much of importance; competitive efficiency can generally compensate for any transport-cost disadvantages arising from location.

Labour Market Deregulation and Economic Performance: The Case of Britain's Docks. A Reply to Ivens

2. Whether the paper is 'one-sided' and 'outrageously biased' is a matter of opinion. Many people believe Aims of Industry to be biased. Research material on which the paper draws is based on interviews with over 40 port managers, a survey of over 300 port employers, a number of detailed case studies, and interviews with dockers, shop stewards, and union officials. 3. We agree that dockers wages were higher than the national average. Evidence of this is presented in Turnbull et al. (1991: 23). Wages at Scheme ports were generally higher than at non-Scheme ports (T&GWU 1989). 4. Employment declined at Scheme ports because of mechanisation and Britain's changing trade pattern (i.e. the shift to Europe), not because of the growth of non-Scheme ports (Bean et al. 1987). 5. Dockers held a statutory monopoly over 'dock work' (as legally defined) in the Scheme ports (NAPE 1988: 4). Abolition of the Scheme would end that monopoly power (see Department of Employment 1989: 10). 6. NAPE may not have supported derecognition of the T&GWU but the Government certainly knew of the plans to sack the shop stewards and derecognise the T&GWU at Tilbury, which was planned several months before the abolition of the Scheme. This was revealed in the recent industrial tribunal at which the shop stewards won their case for unfair dismissal.

British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles

Students of inter-war foreign relations have long recognized the role played by the British public's disapproval of the Treaty of Versailles in the burgeoning of the appeasement policy of the 1930's. The peace settlement, once generally viewed as “stern but just,” came to be perceived by all political parties and by the public at large as unduly harsh and punitive in its treatment of Germany. Hitler's rearmament of the Fatherland, the remilitarization of the Rhineland, theAnschlusswith Austria, and the occupation of the Sudetenland were all significant attacks on the Versailles system which most groups in Britain had come to consider unworthy of defense.The influences which brought the Treaty into disrepute were various. For one thing, the deterioration of Anglo-French relations tended to foster an increasingly sympathetic attitude towards Germany. Then, too, the problems of the British economy led to an awareness that the stability of Britain's former trading partner in Central Europe was essential to her own prosperity and to a corresponding desire to soften those features of the peace settlement which might be impeding German recovery. In addition, John Maynard Keynes' brilliant polemic,The Economic Consequences of the Peace(1919), not only made the case that the reparation clauses were unfair and impossible of fulfillment, but, with its withering portraits of the peacemakers, also tended to undermine respect for the Treaty as a whole. Finally, criticisms of various aspects of the peace settlement by elite groups ranging from bankers to bishops of the Church of England contributed heavily to the public's increasingly negative perception of the entire Treaty.

Legal Aspects of Doing Business With Algeria

This is the first of a series of articles concerning the legal aspects of doing business with Algeria and it is meant to introduce the prospective British exporter to the economic and legal background against which he will have to operate in his relaiionship with that country. Such an exporter will probably have come to the view that expansion into the Algerian market is desirable after reading economic reports stressing Algeria's wealth in natural resources, and its current industrialisation programme which offers interesting prospects to Western firms. In the year 1986 alone, and despite a sharp drop in oil and natural gas revenues owing to depressed world prices, Algeria, nonetheless, succeeded in budgeting some 38.5 billion Dinars (approximately £5.33 billion) for purchases abroad.l Capital goods and semi-finished prodllcts accounted for approximately 50 per cent of that amount.2 By the same token, however, the same economic reports will probably have informed the British exporter of the difficulties involved in penetrating the tightly controlled Algerian market, where the State runs either directly or indirectly every aspect of foreign trade and operates strict regulations concerning the establishment of foreign companies in Algeria. A further note of caution will in all likelihood also have been sounded regarding Britain's poor trading record with Algeria, in which Algeria takes only 3 per cent of its overall imports from the United Kingdom as against 28 per cent from France, 11.5 per cent from West Germany and 11.5 per cent from Italy.3

The terms of trade experience of Britain since the nineteenth century

The terms of trade of Britain exhibited a declining trend in the first half of the nineteenth century. But after two decades of transitional confusion, they started to move upwards. The explanation lies in the fact that the reversal of the trend corresponded to a change in the structure of British export trade from the dominance of traditional textile products towards other manufactures. Unlike the traditional textile products, these other manufactures had little indigenous counterpart in the agrarian countries with which Britain had expanding trade relations. So while cost reduction through technical progress led to a rapid fall in the prices of cotton textiles under stiff competition at home and abroad, producers in the newer sectors did not have to respond much to this type of cost‐reducing technical progress that spread to these sectors in the latter period. Thus, as Prebisch and Singer argued, the classical scheme of distribution of the gains from technical progress through trade that was supposed to...