The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 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
5 - The Wakefield program for middle-class empire
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- 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
Summary
‘Upon what system’, one day inquired that unwearied political student, the Fantaisian Ambassador, of his old friend Skindeep, ‘does your Government surround a small rock in the middle of the sea with fortifications, and cram it full of clerks, soldiers, lawyers, and priests?’
‘Why, really, your Excellency, I am the last man in the world to answer questions, but, I believe, we call it THE COLONIAL SYSTEM!’
Disraeli, PompanillaListen, and mark yon press that wedged in close discomfort stands,
Where Labour thrusts on Capital a crowd of craving hands,
Where Capital itself is cramped, till stagnant stands the gold,
That thro' its limbs, with room to stir, a living tide had rolled …
Yet earth is wide enough for all, and England holds in fee
Rich prairies—broad savannahs—o'er South or Western sea,
Where virgin soils are offering their riches to the hand
That withers for pure lack of work, in this o'er-peopled land …
Then raise the cry, till loud and high it rise from lathe and loom,
From forge and field, from hut and hall, the cry of ‘Elbow-room!’
Of elbow-room for labour, of elbow-room for life,
For mind, for means, that so may come some calm upon our strife.
Punch, 22 July 1848Radical anti-colonialism
One of the most characteristic parts of the Radical creed of the last decades of the nineteenth century was to be an opposition to ‘imperialism’, to the empire-building of the eighties and nineties, climaxed by the Boer War.
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- The Rise of Free Trade ImperialismClassical Political Economy the Empire of Free Trade and Imperialism 1750–1850, pp. 100 - 129Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1970