At a time when supporters of free trade and defenders of protectionism clash again in Europe and in the world, Frank Trentmann traces the history of the apogee and the decline of the culture of free trade in Great Britain, half of the XIXe century in the 1930s. He explored the economic, political and democratic dimensions of an ideology marked by the figure of “ citizen-consumer ».
Frank Trentmann’s work will be a date in economic history and history of ideas. It brings several decisive evidence of the role played by ideologies in the determination of economic policies. It also offers new lighting on the contemporary globalization process, leaning on the ideological springs of the “ first globalization »From the years 1860-1914, which had for heart Great Britain and its empire, and its catastrophic collapse during the interwar period.
Great Britain, homeland of free trade in XIXe century
Great Britain rallied to free trade between 1820 and 1850. Many historians underlined the impact of this turning point on the world liberalization of trade in the second half of XIXe century. For the first time since the beginning of the modern era, a country gave up customs protection and entrusted market forces with the regulation of its external exchanges. The example inspired the rest of Europe, notably France of Napoleon IIIwhich opened to international trade by the Franco-British treaty of 1860. Out of Europe, the British government did not hesitate to use force to impose the “ free trade »Or free trade, for example at China during the opium wars in 1839-1842 and 1856-1860.
This period saw a British free trade culture hatch, which emphasized the links between economic freedom and political freedom. But British free trade could then pass for a hypocritical ideology. Great Britain had only opened its domestic marketAfter have conquered industrial and financial supremacy. His liberal rhetoric seemed above all to serve to persuade the rest of the world to remove obstacles to imports of its products. British free trade was only tested after 1880, with the emergence of serious competitors like the United States and Germany. British producers lose market share, real wages stagnate and a relative feeling of decline gains part of the intellectual and political elites. Foreign competition is deemed unfair, especially since rival countries protect their own markets by high customs tariffs. Joseph Chamberlain, a charismatic conservative politician, proposed in 1903 a “ pricing reform »Available to establish a system of imperial preference between Great Britain and its colonies. To gain public opinion to his cause, he launched a crusade for the “ Buy British ». It has used spectacular means since the opening of hundreds of “ Dumping stores “, Whose displays demonstrate the unacceptable prices practiced by foreign countries, up to the first uses of propaganda cinema.
Everything seemed to announce the success of Chamberlain. The culture of free trade turns out to be more than a screen for the interests of British industry and trade. A counter-campaign is organized, which mobilizes the Liberal Party, enlightened conservatives, the powerful movement of cooperatives, feminist organizations and the first Labor. Tens of thousands of public conferences argue that free trade is first of all a means of increasing the standard of living of popular classes, thanks to “ cheap bread “And at” breakfast ». Freedom of exchanges is presented as the corollary of political freedom. David Lloyd George, liberal politician and future Prime Minister, almost seriously declares that “ If this country wanted German prices, it would also have German wages, … German militarism and German sausages – The diet of German workers being conceived as the consequence of authoritarianism and protectionism of the Wilhelmian Reich. In the 1906 and 1910 elections, the protectionist conservatives were crushed by the liberals and the other free trade candidates.
Trentmann finesse with finesse the democratic character of this self-swandling culture. “” Free trade has created a new type of identity and interest, that of the citizen-consumer. Alongside the citizen as a voter, he developed the consumer’s ideal as an individual who contributed to the democratic vitality of associative life and who, as a buyer concerned with the well-being of others, added an ethical dimension to commercial society. This thesis is supported by numerous original sources, ranging from the archives of certain free trade associations to around thirty illustrations (photographs, posters) which revive the culture of free trade and that of their opponents. The democratic figure of the citizen-consumer also helps to question the simplistic and deprecative history of consumption propagated by the School of Frankfurt. According to Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno and the other representatives of this current of thought, consumerism and mass culture were imposed at the beginning of XXe century to the detriment of individual freedom. Trentmann shows that consumption and democracy can on the contrary, in certain circumstances, strengthen each other.
The ideological erosion of free trade in the interwar period
It is less the economic decline than the moral, political and commercial shock produced by the First World War which leads to the decline of the British free-free culture. The German submarine blockade causes an increase in unprecedented prices of basic necessities. In 1913, Great Britain produced only 21% of the wheat and flour necessary for national consumers. In the name of economic liberalism, the state nevertheless refuses to organize an egalitarian system of rationing. The popular classes are the first victims: a “ milk from milk In 1917-1919 caused a significant increase in infant mortality in workers’ districts. The horrors of the war also dissipate the illusion that freedom of trade is enough to guarantee more harmonious relations between civilized nations.
After the war, two new currents of ideas strengthen and undermine the ideological domination of free trade. On the right, the conservatives appropriate consumerist language and successfully promote the figure of “ Imperial consumer “, In solidarity with (white) producers of the colonies. On the left, a new internationalism abandons the liberal credo inherited from the struggles against the aristocratic state and decides for intergovernmental cooperation, in the political and economic fields, as a means of preserving peace and restoring more egalitarian prosperity. Trentmann studies the intellectual and ideological erosion of free trade by highlighting the role played by pioneer personalities now forgotten, such as Alfred Eckhart Zimmern. Of Huguenote and German Jewish origin, historian of ancient Greece in Oxford, Zimmern is campaigning both against free trade and economic nationalism, linked to him according to him by a materialist conception of human relationships. In their place, he advocated the divorce of citizenship and nationality, and the creation of a new British empire, respectful of cultural diversity within it and cooperating closely with the Society of Nations.
Towards the end of the 1920s, only a few Orthodox economists and the most conservative fringe of the Liberal Decline Party continued to defend unilateral commercial liberalism. The great depression of the 1930s gives the blow of grace to the British free-exchange culture. As early as 1931, a coalition government dominated by conservatives limited imports of industrial products. The following year, a minimum general rate of 10% was adopted, soon to be accompanied by bilateral agreements with the Dominions of the Empire. But as Trentmann points out, the end of free trade in Great Britain was not the result of a conspiracy of economic interests or a conservative coup: it was the logical consequence of the ideological disintegration of the association between freedom of trade, the citizen-consumer and civil society-the three “ C At the heart of British free trade culture.
The end of free trade ?
Trentmann was born in Hamburg, a large commercial port and bastion of German free trade. He studied at the London School of Economics and Harvard, before teaching Princeton and the Birkbeck College in London. His sympathy displayed for the democratic culture of free trade and “ the opening “In the world lends the flank to the suspicion of” cosmopolitanism Detached from the suffering generated, among the workers’ classes, by the free movement of goods. But such an accusation would be dishonest and unfair. Trentmann’s analysis is subtle and balanced. He underlines the character “ Dogmatic, even fanatic »British free trade. Above all, his opponents are less protectionists than supporters of purely economic free trade and little concerned with redistributing the benefits of freedom of international trade fairly.
Free Trade Nation described with sensitivity and erudition the ideological environment which gave birth to the thinkers of a “ new liberalism Sensitive to the dangers of a brake -free capitalism and gone mad, such as John A. Hobson and John M. Keynes. The gradual questioning of Victorian laissez-faire by Keynes appears to be particularly characteristic: it reached its highlight with the official conversion of Keynes, in 1931, to moderate protectionism, as the only reasonable solution to the decomposition of the British economy and society. It is not certain, as Trentmann suggests, that British free trade culture, even if it has lost its fervor, has completely disappeared: Great Britain remains to this day one of the countries most favorable to the liberalization of exchanges and has continued to fight, since it joined the common market in 1973, the protectionist aspects of the European project, such as community preference and common agricultural policy.
Globalization shows us Trentmann, is not only the fruit of economic interactions. It is also and first of all the product of a debate of ideas, within civil society as well as the political class.