Protectionism and Empire Unity after 1875

Abstract

THE years after 1875 saw a growing interest in the idea of reestablishing some special economic relationship with the white colonies. Industrial difficulties were the base from which grew more comprehensive fears, gaining in strength as 1914 approached, that Britain, if she maintained free trade, was in danger of losing her industrial supremacy and her world-power status. Many academics, journalists and politicians, as well as businessmen, were impressed by the large, rapidly growing populations and resources of countries such as Germany and the USA; and it was not lost on them that these great powers had been consolidated and sustained behind protectionist barriers which gave them control of their own markets. Such speculations led on, naturally enough, to the idea that Britain should join with her white colonies — whose growth potential was reckoned to be enormous and who had a large appetite for British goods [151: 105–15] — to create an economic and political unit of similar size and power, whose self-sufficiency would add to Britain’s security and take her into the twentieth century assured of great-power status. For those with grand conceptions such as this, free trade seemed to offer only the prospect of increasing exclusion from overseas markets; the export of capital and manpower to our industrial rivals; and the fragmentation of the empire itself which would eventually be pulled into the economic orbit of larger, more rapidly growing industrial nations [35: ch. 5; 9:pts. ii and iii; 161.