ABSTRACT
Figure 11.1 State and national identity in the nineteenth century 121 Figure 11.2 The end of the International Sugar Union and its continuation 127
Domestic social and political changes
The movement which followed Adam Smith’s plea for the cause of free trade had its first success in the UK as a result of interacting social reforms, which were to take place also in other modernizing nation-states. British reforms included the emancipation of Catholics (1829), the redistribution of parliamentary seats which would end the preferential treatment of landowners over the rising industrial cities, the Reform Movement (1832) that strengthened the middle classes, the abolition of slavery (1833), the creation of a labour inspectorate and social legislation in compensation for the dissatisfaction among the emerging working class (see §4.3), and more scope for trade unions and cooperatives during the economically hard 1840s, when crop failure and unemployment caused hunger and poverty. Whereas industrialists in favour of free trade and the repeal of the Corn Laws sought the workers’ support with the slogan ‘cheap bread’, landowners and the Tory party defended the Corn Laws because they kept corn prices high. The potato blight of 1845 and the huge famine it caused in Ireland settled the dispute in favour of the free trade advocates. In 1846 the Corn Laws were repealed, as were some protective shipping laws in 1849. Now that the entrepreneurs had defeated the landowners, the UK could develop industrially and trade its industrial products internationally. Owing to its technical and economic lead it had little to fear from other states. Since wars on the Continent
prevented a regular supply of corn, food prices had remained high, but large imports from the US would change this situation. These were made possible because railways in the mid-west of the US opened up the large-scale cultivation of corn, while steamships made transport to Europe profitable and less expensive. The economic success of this change and its ensuing welfare, partly as a result of freer trade, made the UK an example to be copied. The Great Exhibition of 1851 at the Crystal Palace in London displayed this.
