Free Trade Nation: Commerce, Consumption, and Civil Society in Modern Britain - Hardcover

Trentmann, Frank

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199209200 ISBN 13: 9780199209200

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2008

Synopsis

Free Trade Nation This book tells the story of Free Trade in modern Britain, its contribution to the development of Britain's democratic culture, and its unravelling in the wake of the First World War.

About this title

Review

Trentmann has not only added a great deal to our knowledge through painstaking research but has written about it with verve and energy and produced a most readable volume...[a] fine book. (Peter J. Cain EH.NET)

Here we have 'a human history of Free Trade' that is at once a delight to read and a cause of profound intellectual stimulation. It graphically brings alive - with splendid colour reproductions of propaganda posters too - the popular passions and prejudices of a world that suddenly ended during the First World War...This is a book imbued with fine scholarship, but one that deserves a wide readership (Peter Clarke, Times Literary Supplement)

[An] absorbing book (History Today)

...an inspired history...Trentmann's book unfolds a dramatic story...gripping (Neue Zuercher Zeitung)

Thoughtful and well-researched. (Christopher Harvie, The Independent)

[A] lucid history of free trade in Britain (David Connett, Sunday Express)

This is terrific history that will inspire economists to remember their subject really can arouse passion. (Evan Davis, BBC Economics Editor)

brilliant (Sunday Telegraph)

[A] fascinating work (Il Riformista)

..paints a vivid picture of the ideological controversy over Free Trade that remains relevant to this day. (Luxemburger Wort)

Synopsis

Free Trade was one of Britain's defining contributions to the modern world. It united civil society and commerce, and gave birth to consumer power. In this book, Frank Trentmann shows how Free Trade contributed to the growth of democratic culture in Britain - and how it fell apart. Far from the cold economic doctrine of today, in an earlier battle over globalization Free Trade was a passionately held ideal, central to public life and national identity. It inspired popular entertainment and advertising, in seaside resorts, shows, and high streets. It mobilized an alliance of elites and the people, businessmen and working-class women, imperialists and internationalists. Free Trade Nation follows the creation of this culture in nineteenth-century Britain, and its subsequent unravelling in the First World War and the inter-war years, when many of its former supporters now attacked it for sacrificing international stability and domestic welfare at the temple of cheapness. These attacks brought to an end a seminal chapter in history.The popular culture of Free Trade was never to return.For anyone interested in the current problem of globalization, this book offers a vivid and thought-provoking perspective on the success and failure of Free Trade.

For champions of trade liberalization, it is a reminder that culture, ethics, and popular communication matter just as much as sound economics. Believers in Fair Trade, by contrast, will be surprised to learn that in the past it was Free Trade, not Fair Trade, that stood for democracy, justice, and peace.

About this edition

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0199209200
• ISBN 13: 9780199209200
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 464