Introduction

Richard Cobden has been the subject of new interest and fresh interpretation on many occasions during the last hundred years or so. Ever since John Morley’s biography, published in 1881, Cobden has been revisited and his ideas refashioned to suit the needs of successive generations of liberal and radical politicians. Morley’s own work, and the activities and publications of the Cobden Club, were part of the late nineteenth-century attempt to return the Liberal party to the principles of anti-imperialism and free trade at a time of Conservative ascendancy and growing calls for greater state intervention. ¹ In the aftermath of the first world war, the radical economist J. A. Hobson turned to Cobden to find a coherent vision of international peace and order. ² During the 1950s, A. J. P. Taylor found in Cobden a timely indictment of the British tendency to become involved in other countries’ problems to the detriment of progress at home and national independence abroad. ³ In more recent years Cobden has been the subject of less partisan interest, and the focus has switched away from his attitude towards foreign policy. A steady stream of biographies and historical studies have thrown more light on his interaction with mid nineteenth-century middle-class culture. ⁴