ABSTRACT
AT HOUGH the great majority of the goods produced inBritain were consumed at home and most of the goodsconsumed there were home-produced, foreign trade was throughout the nineteenth century one of the most powerful influences on the state of the British economy. Particularly from about 1840 the country had moved away from self-sufficiency farther and more rapidly than .b,efore., A bigger proportion of the fundamental necessities of life and industrial livelihood was brought from abroad; a wider range of the commodities produced at home incorporated, directly or indirectly, a certain amount of irreplaceable imports; and the communities of more and more localities found in their midst some export industry whose fortunes appreciably affected the amount of their sales and incomes. A boom or a slump in exports, through its influence on the varied demands of the increasing numbers of people engaged in production for export, had more than proportionate repercussions on the level of economicactivity at home; and nothing contributed more to the air of prosperity in midVictorian Britain than the expansive condition of so many export markets. Circumstances were then very favourable to much of British foreign trade and from 1850 to 1875 it seems certain that it remained consistently more than a fifth (at times perhaps more than a quarter) of all international trade.! In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, with the emergence of new rivals capable of efficiently producing what had been some of Britain's chief export goods, and with the appearance of new demands and new products, external conditions appeared less friendly. At any rate they changed so considerably that Britain could no longer hope to obtain a prosperous foreign trade in much the same ways as in the immediate past. But the country's economic structure was such that there could be no turning backtowards a more insular assortment of activities. External trade
External Trade 139 had to be maintained and increased, without unremunerative pricecutting, or economicdislocationand declinewould ensue. It remained to be seenhowsuccessfullythe challengeof newconditions could be met.!
