The transformation of fiscal reform: reciprocity, modernization, and the fiscal debate within the business community in early twentieth century Britain

1996 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 1005-1048 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Trentmann
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Business Community ◽  
British History ◽  
Political Pluralism ◽  
Separate Spheres ◽  
Tariff Reform ◽  
Liberal Political Economy

ABSTRACTThe debate over Free Trade was central to modem British history. This essay shifts attention from party politics to the changing discourse and perception of state and economy within the business community. It distinguishes three phases in the erosion of liberal political economy: reciprocity, defensive tariff reform, and modernizing protectionism. An analysis of the changing argument for protection points to the emergency of a new politico-economic settlement in the age of war and coordinated capitalism. The Free Trade culture of individualism and market was displaced by a new economic vision of combination and regulation. In political culture, however, state and economy continued to be viewed as separate spheres. Instead of a corporatist system, the new settlement between state and business was marked by a dissociation of economic from political pluralism.

scholarly journals Free Trade and Empire in the Anglo-Irish Commercial Propositions of 1785

2013 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Livesey
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Free Trade Area ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Trade Area ◽  
Institutional Frameworks ◽  
The Right ◽  
Liberal Political Economy ◽  
Open Markets

AbstractWilliam Pitt's 1785 proposal for a free trade area between Britain and Ireland attempted to use free trade as a mechanism of imperial integration. It was a response to the agitation for political reform in Ireland and followed the attainment of legislative independence in 1782. The proposal aimed at coordinating economic and fiscal policy between the kingdoms without imposing explicit political controls. This article establishes that the measure failed because of the lack of consensus around the idea of free trade. Three contrasting ideas of free trade became apparent in the debates around the propositions of 1785: imperial or neomercantilist free trade, Smithean free trade, and national or neo-Machiavellian free trade. Imperial free trade was critical of monopolies but sought to organize trade to the benefit of the imperial metropole; Smithean free trade saw open markets as a discipline that assured efficiency but required imperial institutional frameworks, legally secured, to function. Neo-Machiavellian free trade asserted the right of every political community to organize its trade according to its interests. The article establishes the genealogy of these three positions in pamphlet debates and political correspondence in Britain and Ireland from 1689 to 1785. It argues that majority political opinion in Ireland, with exceptions, understood free trade in a neo-Machiavellian sense, while Pitt was committed to a Smithean ideal. The propositions collapsed because these internal tensions became more evident under the pressure of criticism. Liberal political economy did not of itself offer a route to a British exceptionality that finessed the tensions inherent in empire.

The Problem of Liberal Empire Reconsidered

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 167-177
Author(s):  
Adom Getachew
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
West Indies ◽  
The Political ◽  
British West Indies ◽  
The West ◽  
Economic Violence ◽  
Liberal Political Economy ◽  
Liberal Imperialism

This review essay situates Christopher Taylor’s Empire of Neglect: The West Indies in the Wake of British Liberalism (2018) in the context of the two-decade-long debate about the emergence of a liberal imperialism during the nineteenth century. Through an examination of the political economy of emancipation in the British West Indies, Taylor recasts the problem of liberal imperialism by decentering its justificatory discourses in the metropole to examine its practical effects in the colonies. In this turn, he provides an important and missing “materialization” of liberal empire that makes the deep connections between free trade and freeing slaves legible. The practical and theoretical coincidence of these nineteenth-century developments as well as Taylor’s reconstruction of a West Indian tradition of political economy provide a new way of conceptualizing colonial economic violence elaborated as the product of a neglectful empire. It is in this tradition of critiquing and resisting a neglectful empire that we find critical and normative resources to think beyond the terms of our own entrapments within the terms of liberal political economy.

Expanding Trade

2020 ◽  
pp. 39-61
Author(s):  
Jennifer A. Delton
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Foreign Trade ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Slippery Slope ◽  
Tariff Reform ◽  
Norms And Values

This chapter takes a look at how the expansion of foreign trade was the original impetus for the National Association of Manufacturers' (NAM) creation and would remain a critical focus of the organization's activities throughout the twentieth century. NAM's efforts in this area contributed significantly to the development of international capitalism, otherwise known as “globalization.” But it was not smooth sailing. Many NAM members relied on the protective tariff and opposed any kind of reform to it, which they regarded as a “slippery slope” to free trade. Nor was the Republican Party, with which NAM had the most influence, interested in tariff reform. NAM leadership fully supported tariffs, but it also advocated tariff reforms designed to encourage trade, and in this regard it was uncomfortably in alignment with the Democratic Party. So NAM's work in this area was significant less for its influence on government, and more for introducing and acclimating its members to the new norms and values of multinational, internationalist capitalism, thus bringing a largely conservative and parochial clientele into the modern political economy. A forgotten by-product of its efforts was the promotion of and appreciation for cultural diversity and international cooperation.

Laissez-Faire in the American Tradition

2020 ◽  
pp. 27-74
Author(s):  
Christopher W. Calvo
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Free Markets ◽  
American Tradition ◽  
Laissez Faire ◽  
Thomas Cooper ◽  
Liberal Political Economy

This chapter discusses liberal economic thought in the Southern and Northeastern discourses. Regional historical contexts account for the internal and trans-Atlantic divisions within antebellum liberal political economy. Southern free traders like John Calhoun and Thomas Cooper tied their brand of laissez-faire to a politically and economically inspired states’ rights and agrarian defense of slavery. In theoretically significant ways, Southerners divorced their version of free trade from Northeastern and British liberalism. Divisions widened as slavery was raised to the fore of domestic politics, and made permanent when British laissez-faire grew attached to industrialization. Northeastern free traders like Francis Wayland and John McVickar pursued a style of laissez-faire that comported with the Smithian tradition by focusing on the moral and theological benefits of free trade universalism. Northeastern liberals largely ignored the economic benefits of free markets. And the mid-century secular turn in economics, especially in British thought, completed the breach between American and European expressions of intellectual capitalism.

The Political Economy of Local Governance in Yemen

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 45-69
Author(s):  
Benoit Challand ◽  
Joshua Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Local Development ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
Strong State ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Local Initiatives ◽  
Self Rule

This paper provides an historical exploration of local governance in Yemen across the past sixty years. It highlights the presence of a strong tradition of local self-rule, self-help, and participation “from below” as well as the presence of a rival, official, political culture upheld by central elites that celebrates centralization and the strong state. Shifts in the predominance of one or the other tendency have coincided with shifts in the political economy of the Yemeni state(s). When it favored the local, central rulers were compelled to give space to local initiatives and Yemen experienced moments of political participation and local development.

scholarly journals THE PROTECTION OF THE RICH AGAINST THE POOR: THE POLITICS OF ADAM SMITH’S POLITICAL ECONOMY

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 138-158
Author(s):  
James A. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
General Attitude ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Natural Forms ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Point Of Departure

AbstractMy point of departure in this essay is Smith’s definition of government. “Civil government,” he writes, “so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.” First I unpack Smith’s definition of government as the protection of the rich against the poor. I argue that, on Smith’s view, this is always part of what government is for. I then turn to the question of what, according to Smith, our governors can do to protect the wealth of the rich from the resentment of the poor. I consider, and reject, the idea that Smith might conceive of education as a means of alleviating the resentment of the poor at their poverty. I then describe how, in his lectures on jurisprudence, Smith refines and develops Hume’s taxonomy of the opinions upon which all government rests. The sense of allegiance to government, according to Smith, is shaped by instinctive deference to natural forms of authority as well as by rational, Whiggish considerations of utility. I argue that it is the principle of authority that provides the feelings of loyalty upon which government chiefly rests. It follows, I suggest, that to the extent that Smith looked to government to protect the property of the rich against the poor, and thereby to maintain the peace and stability of society at large, he cannot have sought to lessen the hold on ordinary people of natural sentiments of deference. In addition, I consider the implications of Smith’s theory of government for the question of his general attitude toward poverty. I argue against the view that Smith has recognizably “liberal,” progressive views of how the poor should be treated. Instead, I locate Smith in the political culture of the Whiggism of his day.

Russell's Other Alter Ego

Dialogue ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 701-709
Author(s):  
R. E. Tully
Keyword(s):  
Free Trade ◽  
Women's Suffrage ◽  
Complex Character ◽  
Tariff Reform ◽  
Alter Ego ◽  
Women’S Suffrage

This is the first volume in the Collected Papers which deals exclusively with Russell's non-technical writings and, chronologically, it is the immediate successor of volume 1. Volumes 2 through 7 cover roughly the same span of years as volume 12 (1902–1914) but are devoted to his technical writings on mathematics, logic and philosophy. Of this group, however, only volume 7 has so far been published. The contents of volume 12 are intended to show two contrasting sides of Russell's highly complex character: the contemplative (but nonacademic) side and the active. The latter is much easier to delineate and much more widely known. During 1904, Russell rose to defend traditional Liberal principles of free trade and to assail the British government's protectionist proposals for tariff reform. His various articles, book reviews, critiques and letters to editors are gathered here. Three years later, he campaigned for election to Parliament from Wimbledon as the Women's Suffrage candidate against a staunch anti-suffragist. The outcome was never in doubt, not even to Russell, since Wimbledon was a safe seat for the Conservatives, and in the end Russell lost by a margin greater than 3-to-l, but his fight had been vigorous and had managed to gain national attention.

scholarly journals Party Politics and the Political Economy of Ghana’s Oil

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giles Mohan ◽  
Kojo Pumpuni Asante ◽  
Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
The Political

Morality and Monarchy in the Queen Caroline Affair

1991 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 697-722 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara L. Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Party Politics ◽  
British Society ◽  
British History ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Wide Spread ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The People ◽  
Moral Standards ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Government

The licentious career of Caroline of Brunswick, the most notorious queen in modern British history, was only exceeded by that of her husband, George IV, and the scandal that emerged when he attempted to obtain a divorce inspired one of the most unusual episodes of nineteenth-century British history. For six months the attention of the country was focused on the queen's trial; massive demonstrations in her support were familiar sights in London streets and news of the matter dominated the columns of the press. The popular outpouring of support for the queen often took the form of reviling the king and his ministers, and revolution seemed to be in the air, yet because no lasting political change resulted from this tumult, historians have tended to dismiss the affair as relatively unimportant. However, to view this interlude primarily in terms of party politics is to overlook the fact that the majority of the people who formed the massive crowds that so alarmed the government were neither radicals nor reformers, and many, if not most of them were unenfranchised. In order to better understand the implications of this unrest, it is important to identify those factors that inspired British men and women to openly denigrate their ruler and to heap opprobrium on the members of government in defense of a woman who, ironically, many believed to be guilty as charged. Such an examination makes it clear that this was an event of profound cultural significance and was in some respects the first wide-spread popular expression of the moral standards that have come to be labelled “Victorian.”Any attempt to judge “public opinion” is fraught with difficulty. Most of the surviving journals, memoirs, and collections of letters from this period were written by members of the gentry and aristocracy; most of the middle and working-class people who actively demonstrated in support of the queen or who signed the numerous addresses sent to her have tended to remain silent and anonymous. Newspaper and other written accounts of the affair were often extremely partisan, for British society was sharply divided on this issue. Political caricatures, however, overcome some of these difficulties.

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