<\/p>\n
In this post Dr Chris Grocott, Lecturer in Management and Economic History in ULSB, discusses his recently published book, co-edited with Dr Jo Grady (University of Sheffield), on the continuing imperialism of free trade.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Free trade is once again part of popular political discourse. In the United States of America, Donald Trump has rejected it.\u00a0 By contrast, Canada and the European Union have provisionally implemented one of the world\u2019s largest free trade deals in the form of the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA).\u00a0 And in the United Kingdom, Brexiter politicians such as Liam Fox and Boris Johnson have imagined a world where Britain trades freely with its former dominions and colonies (the so-called CANZUK proposal) as a counter-balance to the potential economic decline threatened by Brexit. \u00a0If that proposal sounds like something from the \u2018League of Empire Loyalists<\/a>\u2019, it is precisely because it is \u2013 free trade and imperialism have a long history which Jo Grady<\/a> and I explore in our newly published edited collection, The Continuing Imperialism of Free Trade: Developments, Trends, and the Role of Supranational Organisations<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the nineteenth century, liberal political economy held free trade as its central economic principle. So when in 1953, John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson published an article in the Economic History Review entitled \u2018The Imperialism of Free Trade<\/a>\u2019 the title alone was incendiary.\u00a0 Gallagher and Robinson argued that the goal of British imperialism had been consistent from the early nineteenth century onwards, to establish access to markets on free trade terms favourable to British business.\u00a0 This was achieved through formal imperialism (annexation) if necessary, but preferably it would be achieved through the co-option of local elites who would then collaborate with British \u2018informal\u2019 imperial interests.\u00a0 In this sense, Gallagher and Robinson argued, free trade was not an alternative to imperialism \u2013 it was the goal.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In our book we explore, along with sixteen other contributors to eleven chapters, the continuing relevance of Gallagher and Robinson\u2019s ideas. We do so by thinking about their ideas of formal and informal imperialism across the past two centuries and not only in the context of British imperialism, but in the context of the expansion of a range of economies including those of the European Union, United States, and China.\u00a0 For example, Adam Burns<\/a> tracks the relationship between the United States of America and Cuba from 1898-2017.\u00a0 In doing so, he demonstrates how, in the early twentieth century, military interventions were used to change Cuban governments that were unfriendly to US capital.\u00a0 Interestingly, he goes on to demonstrate how Fidel Castro\u2019s government was able to resist US imperial tactics of both formal and informal nature through its alignment with the Soviet Union during the Cold War.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But in the book, we do not just explore how other countries have adapted \u2013 and resisted \u2013 the tools of imperial expansion employed by Britain in its imperial heyday. We also look how supranational organisations have used these tools too.\u00a0 In their chapter on the Troika bailouts in Greece, Costas Eleftheriou<\/a> and Orestis Papadopoulos<\/a> examine how the economic arrangements imposed upon Greece as part of the financial bailouts of 2010, 2012 and 2015 restructured the Greek economy in a fashion not dissimilar to the informal imperial tactics used by Britain.\u00a0 Yet, in Greece this restructuring was done not for the benefit of one country\u2019s economy but rather to open up the Greek economy to, amongst others, German and French business interests whilst at the same time saving the blushes of over-extended banks from those countries which were sat on mountains of near-worthless Greek debt.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Over all, the book shows that expanding economies have consistently sought to leverage their peripheries in order to open up opportunities for investment speculation and access to labour and other markets. When required, this has been undertaken formally, as James Fargher<\/a>\u2019s chapter on British military intervention in Egypt demonstrates.\u00a0 But, by preference informal control of peripheral economies has been preferred.\u00a0 Running throughout the chapters dealing with more contemporary events therefore as an examination of how neoliberal political economy has underpinned the expansion of dominant economies and the expense of the periphery. Martin Quinn<\/a> examines how the European Union uses policy prescriptions to impose the neoliberal-inspired Washington Consensus onto economies both within and with out the EU.\u00a0 Likewise, Mark Dearn shows how EU trade deals build in to them neoliberal principles, provoking former EU president Jos\u00e9 Manual Barroso to declare the European Union to be the first \u2018non-imperial empire\u2019. Yet, refusal to annex is, as Gallagher and Robinson argued, no sign of refusal to control.\u00a0 Dearn demonstrates that the EU\u2019s trade deals have worked hard to ensure free trade for its members. The Continuing Imperialism of Free Trade<\/em> shows that imperialism is not a thing of the past, and that imperial control is not limited to annexation of territory.\u00a0 Nor is it something to be analysed as being separate from capitalism.\u00a0 Far from being the \u2018highest stage of capitalism\u2019, to use Lenin\u2019s phrase, we argue that imperialism is intrinsic to the expansion of capitalist economies.\u00a0 With talk of global free trade now a hot topic in the UK, European Union and Canada, our book is an excellent guide to how this expansion operates.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In this post Dr Chris Grocott, Lecturer in Management and Economic History in ULSB, discusses his recently published book, co-edited with Dr Jo Grady (University of Sheffield), on the continuing imperialism of free trade. Free trade is once again part of popular political discourse. In the United States of America, Donald Trump has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":117,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[947,328],"class_list":["post-725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-free-trade","tag-imperialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/117"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=725"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":728,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions\/728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}