Abstract
During the nineteenth century Britain’s manufacturing superiority and share of world trade helped transform the City into the ‘natural’ commercial and financial centre of the world system. However, the City’s position was never a simple reflection of this economic strength. In addition to the productive base, the following may be taken as the proximate conditions of existence for the City’s growth: (i) the unprecedented 100 years peace between the major European powers (1815–1914) — the Pax Britannica; (ii) the commitment to economic liberalism (1820–1931) — in particular, free trade; (iii) the reintroduction and formalisation of the domestic gold standard which, significantly, lasted as long as the peace itself.
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Notes and References
See Frank Whitson Fetter, Development of British Monetary Orthodoxy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965) pp.231, 256.
See E. Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968).
Isaac Ilyich Rubin, A History of Economic Thought (London: Links, 1979): originally (Moscow: 1929) p.26.
See Gordon, Economic Doctrine, and Lucy Brown, The Board of Trade and the Free Trade Movement (Oxford University Press, 1958).
Perhaps this is one of the more accurate meanings of the term laissez-faire, which refers not so much to immunity from state intervention but rather the preservation of a monetary system which provides the necessary conditions for free and impartial market competition. For a discussion of the development of economic liberalism which stresses the monetary dimensions, see Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1944).
See P.J. Cain, ‘Capitalism, War and Internationalisation in the Thought of Richard Cobden’, British Journal of International Studies, 5, (1979) pp.112–30.
J. Gallagher and R. Robinson, ‘The Imperialisation of Free Trade, 1815–1914’, Economic History Review, iv (1953) p.6.
D.C.M. Platt, Finance, Trade and Politics in British Foreign Policy, 1815–1914, (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1968).
S.B. Saul, Studies in British Overseas Trade 1870–1914 (Liverpool University Press, 1960) p.58. Moreover, India was not a major recipient of British investment capital (See Fieldhouse, Economics and Empire.
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© 1984 Geoffrey Ingham
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Ingham, G. (1984). The Emergence and Consolidation of City Dominance 1815–90. In: Capitalism Divided?. Contemporary Social Theory. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-86082-1_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-86082-1_6
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