Free trade in Great Britain began in earnest in 1820 and gained momentum with the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 and the Navigation Act in 1849. With the Anglo-French Commercial Treaty of 1860, the English practiced a largely free trade policy until WWI. During this time, Great Britain was the worlds wealthiest and most powerful nation.Really? Then explain please how a nation that was the largest industrial power in the world, hands down, pre free trade, couldn't build enough bullets and rifles in WW1 to fight Germany and had to import them from the US which was an anti-Free Trade nation at the time.
Really? Then explain please how a nation that was the largest industrial power in the world, hands down, pre free trade, Great Britain became the world's wealthiest and most powerful nation after it embraced free trade, not before. Here is how historian Paul Kennedy described the situation:
"Between 1760 and 1830, the United Kingdom was responsible for around two-thirds of Europe’s industrial growth of output, and its share of world manufacturing production leaped from 1.9 to 9.5 percent; in the next thirty years, British industrial expansion pushed that figure to 19.9 percent, despite the spread of new technology to other countries in the West. Around 1860, which was probably when the country reached its zenith in relative terms, the United Kingdom produced 53 percent of the world’s iron and 50 percent of its coal and lignite, and consumed just under half of the raw cotton output of the globe. With 2 percent of the world’s population and 10 percent of Europe’s, the United Kingdom would seem to have had a capacity in modern industries equal to 40-45 percent of the world’s potential and 55-60 percent of that in Europe. . . . It alone was responsible for one-fifth of the world’s commerce, but for two-thirds of the trade in manufactured goods. Over one-third of the world’s merchant marine flew under the British flag, and that share was steadily increasing. It was no surprise that the mid-Victorians exulted at their unique state, being now . . . the trading center of the universe."
Lillian Knowles, an English Professor of Economic history described the change in Great Britain's trading policy this way:
"The period from 1886 to 1914 witnessed a great change in English policy. It is the period of abandonment of laissez-faire in colonization, commerce, industry and agriculture. Great Britain began to modify her cosmopolitan ideas of free trade and laissez-faire, and to concentrate on developing trade within the British Empire."
In 1915, the British government renounced free trade by imposing onerous tariffs of 33 1/3 percent on motor cars and parts, musical instruments, clocks, wristwatches, and movie film. Subsequent legislation broadened the list of items subject to protectionist tariffs.
According to Keith Hutchison, who wrote The Decline and Fall of British Capitalism:
"The abandonment of free trade during World War I coincided with the beginning of Great Britain’s economic decline. Freedom to trade had been the strongest pillar of Britain’s general free-market policy. When that pillar fell, the doorway opened to socialist measures of all kinds. British history in the 20th century is essentially one of almost continually expanding government control of the economy, and an equal decline in Great Britain’s power and influence in world affairs."