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9780691199320

"The forgotten history of the liberal radicals, socialist internationalists, feminists and Christians who envisioned free trade as the necessary prerequisite for anti-imperialism and peaceToday, free trade is often associated with right-wing free marketeers. In Pax Economica, historian Marc-William Palen shows that free trade and globalization in fact have roots in nineteenth-century left-wing politics. In this counter-history of an idea, Palen explores how, beginning in the 1840s, left-wing globalists became the leaders of the peace and anti-imperialist movements of their age. By the early twentieth century, an unlikely alliance of liberal radicals, socialist internationalists, feminists and Christians envisioned free trade as essential for a prosperous and peaceful world order. Of course, this vision was at odds with the era's strong predilections for nationalism, protectionism, geopolitical conflict and colonial expansion. Palen reveals how, for some of its most radical left-wing adherents, free trade represented a hard-nosed critique of imperialism, militarism and war.Palen shows that the anti-imperial component of free trade was a phenomenon that came to encompass the political left wing within the British, American, Spanish, German, Dutch, Belgian, Italian, Russian, French and Japanese empires. The left-wing vision of a "pax economica" evolved to include supranational regulation to maintain a peaceful free-trading system-which paved the way for a more liberal economic order after World War II and such institutions as the United Nations, the European Union and the World Trade Organization. Palen's findings upend how we think about globalisation, free trade, anti-imperialism and peace. Rediscovering the left-wing history of globalism offers timely lessons for our own era of economic nationalism and geopolitical conflict"-- Provided by publisher.

"A new economic history which uncovers the forgotten left-wing, anti-imperial, pacifist origins of economic cosmopolitanism and free trade from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. The post-1945 international free-trade regime was established to foster a more integrated, prosperous, and peaceful world. As US Secretary of State Cordell Hull (1933-1944), "Father of the United Nations" and one of the regime's principal architects, explained in his memoirs, "unhampered trade dovetailed with peace; high tariffs, trade barriers, and unfair economic competition, with war." Remarkably, this same economic order is now under assault from the country most involved in its creation: the United States. A global economic nationalist resurgence - heralded by Donald Trump's "America First" protectionism and resultant trade wars with the USA's closest allies and trading partners - now looks to transform over seventy years of regional and global market integration into an illiberal economic order resembling that of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Economic cosmopolitan critics of today's retreat from free trade have offered dire warnings that doing so would be catastrophic for global consumers and an existential threat to regional and world peace. But under what circumstances did this ideological marriage of free trade, prosperity, and peace arise? Who were its main adherents? How did this same free-trade ideology succeed in becoming the new economic orthodoxy following the Second World War? And how might the successes and failures of this earlier struggle to reform the economic order inform today's globalization crisis? In Pax Economica, economic historian Marc-William Palen finds answers amid a century of transnational peace and anti-imperial activism that stretched from Britain's unilateral adoption of free trade in 1846 to the founding of the US-led liberal trading system that arose immediately after the Second World War. Over five thematic chapters, considering the period from different perspectives, and utilising archival research conducted in Europe, North America, and Australia, Palen shows that this politico-ideological struggle to create a more prosperous and peaceful world through free trade pitted economic cosmopolitans against economic nationalists. Cosmopolitans sought to counter the industrialising world's embrace of economic nationalism because they believed - much like today's critics of Trump's tariffs and Brexit - that economic nationalism laid the groundwork for trade wars, high prices for consumers, and geopolitical conflict; while free trade created market interdependence, prosperity, social justice, and a more peaceful world. Pax Economica argues that this cosmopolitan fight for free trade laid foundations for a century of anti-imperial and peace activism across the globe - and paved the way for today's global trade regime now under siege"-- Provided by publisher.

Introduction

The Imperialism of Economic Nationalism: Globalizing the American System of Protectionism

The Anti-Imperialism of Free Trade: The Liberal Radical Critique of Imperialism and War

Marx and Manchester: The Pacifistic Evolution of the Socialist Internationalist Free-Trade Tradition

The International Feminist Fight for Free Trade, Anti-Imperialism, and Peace

Free Trade, Fraternity, and Federation: The Economic Cosmopolitanism of Christian Pacifism

Pax Economica vs. Pax Americana: The Left-wing Free-Trade Fight Against Neocolonialism, Neomercantilism, and Neoliberalism, 1945-2022.

Imperialism > Economic aspects

Free trade > Political aspects

International relations > History.

Radicalism > Economic aspects > History.

Imperialism > Economic aspects > History.

Free trade > Political aspects > History.