From Dependence to Autonomy: Judgments on Trade as an Engine of British Growth

From the perspective of earlier times the economic accomplishments of the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century are astonishing. Certainly it would have astonished Ricardo and Malthus, who agreed with each other on little but the dismal prospects for the years to come, to learn in 1820 that by 1913, in the face of a near doubling in the number of heads, real national income per head would more than triple. ¹ Looking backwards over a century and a half of rapid economic growth spreading through Europe and its offshoots we are perhaps less inclined to be impressed with a growth rate in income per head of 1·3 percent per year, but this is because the successes of the United Kingdom then and the still greater successes of her imitators abroad now, for whom she prepared the way, have dulled our sense of wonder. This exceptional burst of economic growth requires explanation; that is, it requires the identification of a list of influences on the British economy in the nineteenth century that can distinguish it from the earlier and usual pattern of economic ebb and flow.