The century of economic internationalism

The hundred years between the battle of Waterloo and the start of the First World War was the century of economic internationalism in Britain. The policy of laissez-faire, whereby land, labour, and capital were left to the operation of self-regulating markets, attained its fullest realisation in the middle years of the century and thereafter declined. Already, indeed, legislation existed on such matters as sanitation, food, and contagious diseases, child labour, hours and conditions of work, public libraries, prisons, and schools, and in subsequent decades further legislation was introduced to limit the impact upon society of market forces and maintain tolerable conditions of life. Nothing, however, was done to aler Britain's relations with the rest of the world. Britain continued to treat the whole world as a single market, accepting the burden of adjustment to the ebb and flow of international demand and prices, and looking to international solutions to larger problems rather than resorting to protectionist policies.

Of the five main components of economic internationalism, three were accepted without controversy by the early years of the nineteenth century. Unrestricted capital movements, or free trade in capital as it was occasionally known, already existed and required no agitation. Restrictions on the emigration of skilled artisans were swept away in 1825. And the ban on the export of machinery, already eroded by rapid technical change, was formally repealed in 1843.