The Myth of Free-Trade Britain and Fortress France: Tariffs and Trade in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

This examination of official commercial statistics suggests that the conventional wisdom regarding early free-trade efforts of Britain and France is wrong. French average tariff levels were, surprisingly, consistently below those of Britain throughout most of the nineteenth century, even after the abolition of the Corn Laws and before passage of the 1860 Treaty of Commerce. Previous scholarship has focused on French commercial policies covering a narrow range of items and has largely ignored the overall trade policies of both nations. This study moves us further away from stories of development and trade confined to a few "leading" sectors."Our Parliament is to be prorogued on Tuesday and dissolved the same day," Victoria wrote to her Belgian uncle on June 29, 1852. "Lord Derby himself told us, that he considered Protection as quite gone. It is a pity they did not find this out a little sooner; it would have saved so much annoyance, so much difficulty."' While France was thus maintaining almost intact her virtually prohibitive tariff, England was making rapid progress toward the adoption of complete free trade, so that the divergence in the tariff policies of the two countries became steadily greater. 2 O ne of the great economic advances of the nineteenth century was the spread of liberalism and the expansion of world trade. In the popular fable that makes "history" of this event, Britain was the great nation of free trade, whose liberal commercial policy made possible the achievement of unparalleled peace and prosperity. Britain's abandonment of protection and subsequent rapid success spurred other nations

Discussing Chevalier’s Data on the Efficiency of Tariffs for American and French Canals in the 1830s

“…In fact, in our sample, some French tariffs, such as the Briare Canal, exhibited the most efficient results even when considering American tariffs. In this finding, we can agree with authors like Nye (1991) and argue that Chevalier was trying to denounce a larger gap than actually existed to accelerate the changes he wished to see in French transportation policy. …”

“…The construction of this palace impressed him deeply, especially its rapidity and the building's design and transparency to light. However, he was mainly impressed by British tariffs, which could be noted as the first signal of his favor of the future Cobden-Chevalier Treaty 5 (although Nye, 1991, confirmed that British tariffs were consistently lower than those of France).…”

Tariffs and Growth in the Late 19th Century

“…Despite the impact of revenue tariffs on average customs duties, many features of Table 1 correspond with what we know about the tariff history of the period, in particular the high United States and low United Kingdom tariffs (although the British index for 1875±9 is slightly higher than that for France, mirroring the debate between Nye (1991) and Irwin (1993)). Even features of Table 1 that seem surprising are often compatible with other evidence on relative protection levels in the late 19th century.…”

Was Italy a protectionist country?

“…This result was achieved also thanks to quite high duties on high-demand low-elasticity goods, such as mineral oils, alcohol and tobacco. The trade policy of European countries in the decades before World War I may have resembled more that of Britain in the 1840S-70S (Nye 1991) than the importsubstitution strategies of the LDCs in the 1950S-60S. 17 The ranking for overall protection (Estevadeordal 1997, Table 6) does not tally with the product-level data of Table 7.…”