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25 - Economic Nationalism in an Imperial Age, 1846–1946

from Part III - Intersections: National(ist) Synergies and Tensions with Other Social, Economic, Political, and Cultural Categories, Identities, and Practices

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2023

By
Marc-William Palen
Edited by
Cathie Carmichael ,
Matthew D'Auria  and
Aviel Roshwald
Cathie Carmichael
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Matthew D'Auria
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Aviel Roshwald
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
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Summary

When Britain unilaterally embraced free trade in 1846, proponents at home and abroad widely assumed that the rest of the industrializing world would soon follow suit. But Britain’s economic cosmopolitan trump card received an unanticipated countermove from its competitors; one rival after another instead turned to economic nationalism in order to foster their infant industries at home and to expand their closed colonial markets abroad. Even Britain’s own settler colonies abandoned free trade by the turn of the century. Economic nationalism, not free trade, became the driving political economic force underpinning the century of imperial expansion from the mid-nineteenth century to the Second World War.

British free traders sought to curb this economic nationalist turn, and the United States, Britain’s resource-rich former colony, seemingly contained the most fruitful soil for free trade’s mid-nineteenth-century transplantation. All the early omens appeared promising.

Keywords

Economic NationalismAmerican SystemProtectionismFriedrich ListImperialismEconomic Development
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Nationhood and Nationalism , pp. 538 - 558
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Further Reading

Baxter, Maurice Glen, Henry Clay and the American System (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1995).Google Scholar
Boianovsky, Mauro, “Friedrich List and the Economic Fate of Tropical Countries,” History of Political Economy, 45 (2013), 647–691.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chang, Ha-Joon, Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (London: Anthem, 2002).Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, Matthew P., Liberal Imperialism in Germany: Expansionism and Nationalism, 1848–1884 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2008).Google Scholar
Guettel, Jens-Uwe, German Expansionism, Imperial Liberalism, and the United States, 1776–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Helleiner, Eric, “Economic Nationalism as a Challenge to Economic Liberalism? Lessons from the 19th Century,” International Studies Quarterly, 46 (September 2002), 307–329.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ince, Onur Ulas, “Friedrich List and the Imperial Origins of the National Economy,” New Political Economy, 21 (2016), 380–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levi-Faur, David, “Friedrich List and the Political Economy of the Nation-State,” Review of International Political Economy, 4 (Spring 1997), 154–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palen, Marc-William, The “Conspiracy” of Free Trade: The Anglo-American Struggle over Empire and Economic Globalisation, 1846–1896 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roussakis, E. N., Friedrich List, the Zollverein, and the Uniting of Europe (Bruges: College of Europe, 1968).Google Scholar
Smith, Woodruff D., The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).Google Scholar
Szlajfer, Henryk, Economic Nationalism and Globalizaiton: Lessons from Latin America and Central Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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