The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism: Classical Political Economy the Empire of Free Trade and Imperialism 1750–1850

by Bernard Semmel

• ISBN13: 9780521548151
• ISBN10: 0521548152
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-02-05
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism seeks to uncover some of the intellectual origins of the imperialism of the classic period, the sources from which later theories of imperialism were constructed, and the character of the ideology which underlay the dismantling of the old colonial system and the construction of the Victorian Pax Britannica. The author discusses the development and diffusion of a number of the central arguments of the 'science' of political economy, from the standpoint of a historian rather than an economist, which were crucial not only to the construction of theories of capitalist imperialism, but also served as a spur both to efforts at colonization, and to establishing a British Workshop of the World.

Table of Contents

Preface

1. Introduction

2. Theory and politics of Free Trade Empire in the eighteenth century

3. The agrarian critique and the emergence of orthodoxy

4. The third school: Wakefield and the radical economists

5. The Wakefield program for middle-class empire

6. Parliament, political economy, and the Workshop of the World

7. Cobdenism and the 'dismal science'

8. Mercantilist revival

9. Classical political economy, the Empire of Free Trade, and imperialism

Selected Bibliography

Index.