Economic Elements in the Pax Britannica: Studies in British Foreign Trade in the Nineteenth Century

Britain, the leading industrial, commercial, and creditor nation of the last century and the pioneer in the application of machine techniques to manufacturing, was a significant contributor to peaceful economic and social progress in the period. With the overthrow of Napoleon, Britain showed that she would participate in the maintenance of peace, and she began to promote peaceful development in other countries as well as at home by freely exporting machinery and the services of engineers and technicians, and of capital. By the 1840’s Britain began the experiment of opening her ports wide to the trade and shipping of the world which made her the prosperous center of a highly international economy exerting a good deal of influence by example of the policies of other nations.

Albert Imlah reports the actual market value of British imports and re-exports, and he investigates the British balance of payments and exports of capital. In thorough statistical form he presents British terms of trade; he shows the failure of protectionism and the later success of free trade.