ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the patterns of world trade and production, noting the appearance and disappearance of trade’s pre-eminence in the nineteenth century economic growth. It establishes that there was a dramatic shift in the direction of tariff rates in the late-nineteenth century, a near universal move from declining rates to increasing rates. The chapter demonstrates that a similar change took place in the realm of colonization; whereas empires had remained relatively stable during the mid-nineteenth century, those holdings expanded dramatically during the late-nineteenth century. It also directly rebuts rival historical analyses, ones that argue that this period is marked by systemic continuity rather than by systemic change. Free trade maximized their national incomes only when the other large states were practicing free trade, while economic closure did so when those same states were moving toward economic closure.
