ABSTRACT
In his fascinating chapter on free trade after 1846, Anthony Howe enters into a subject which has been heavily neglected by historians, who until recently seem to have taken the position that there was scarcely a story to tell. He also rescues the doctrine of free trade from the accusation, made for instance by Chamberlain’s tariff reformers after 1900, that it was a fossilized and sterile anachronism which had outlived its usefulness. Stressing the depth and strength of Victorian Britain’s attachment to free trade, his essay shows the doctrine to have developed: it proved ‘neither unbending nor narrow but rather…one of the most versatile and malleable of Victorian doctrines.’ In the immediate post-repeal period, he reveals the triumph of Peelite universal free trade over an (all-too-often overlooked) Huskissonite as well as a protectionist opposition within the Tory camp, and a consolidation of the support for a ‘fiscal free trade’ which brought the Peelites closer to the Whig-Radicals and which found ready favour in the Civil Service. He also restores the reputation of the Whigs on imperial preference and unilateralism in the post-repeal period, uncovering their ‘in some ways…bold attempt to pick up the Peelite mantle’ and their role in consolidating middle-class support against a possible protectionist reaction in the years before 1852.
