ABSTRACT
The last quarter of the nineteenth century witnessed a spectacular revival of tariff protectionism in Europe, following decades of continuous expansion of world trade and trade liberalisation, which brought tariff barriers down to historical lows. A first round of tariffs were passed in virtually all the Continental countries3 at the juncture of the 1870s and 1880s, primarily to fend off the ‘grain invasion’ from the ‘new worlds’ (Kindleberger, 1975; O’Rourke, 1997) and isolate domestic farmers from outside competition: in Italy in 1878, in Germany in 1879, in France in 1881. These proved inadequate, however, and duties had to be raised and extended in the following decades (in 1887 and 1895 in Italy, in 1892 and 1910 in France, in 1902 in Germany) while other countries (those with control on their trade policy4) followed suit when time came to renew their trade agreements with their main partners. Only a handful held steadfastly to the free-trade stance they had committed themselves to previously (most notably Denmark, Holland and Britain).5
