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Yeah, all that free trade was just killing them before they became of bunch of ignorant protectionists. If Thatcher and her free market reforms hadn't saved them, they'd still be the basket case of Europe.

It was a philosophy that was deployed after they had attained those heights. And then they drank their own poison too much...they believed it. Ha Joon Chang, (PhD and Professor Economics from Cambridge University, UK and author of Kicking Away the Ladder: Policies and Institutions for Economic Development in Historical Perspective Chang pops your balloon of revisionist history, when he observed:

Almost all of today’s rich countries used tariff protection and subsidies to develop their industries. Interestingly, Britain and the USA, the two countries that are supposed to have reached the summit of the world economy through their free-market, free-trade policy, are actually the ones that had most aggressively used protection and subsidies.
Contrary to the popular myth, Britain had been an aggressive user, and in certain areas a pioneer, of activist policies intended to promote its industries. Such policies, although limited in scope, date back from the 14th century (Edward III) and the 15th century (Henry VII) in relation to woollen manufacturing, the leading industry of the time. England then was an exporter of raw wool to the Low Countries, and Henry VII for example tried to change this by taxing raw wool exports and poaching skilled workers from the Low Countries.
Particularly between the trade policy reform of its first Prime Minister Robert Walpole in 1721 and its adoption of free trade around 1860, Britain used very dirigiste trade and industrial policies, involving measures very similar to what countries like Japan and Korea later used in order to develop their industries. During this period, it protected its industries a lot more heavily than did France, the supposed dirigiste counterpoint to its free-trade, free-market system. Given this history, argued Friedrich List, the leading German economist of the mid-19th century, Britain preaching free trade to less advanced countries like Germany and the USA was like someone trying to “kick away the ladder” with which he had climbed to the top.
List was not alone in seeing the matter in this light. Many American thinkers shared this view. Indeed, it was American thinkers like Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary of the USA, and ...economist Daniel Raymond, who first systematically developed the infant industry argument.

Did you get that? Great Britain didn't even adopt the doctrine of Free Trade until 1860. Your blather from Paul Kennedy admits...that 1860 was their comparative industrial economic height:

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...

You have been busted by REALITY. This revisionist posture you concocted...by taking the half-truths and misreading Kennedy... notwithstanding, this argument goes decisively towards the conservative position...

As for Thatcher, she beat inflation, stopped the confiscatory punishing income and savings and investment, and focussed taxation instead on consumption, and restored internal market freedoms, fighting the impediments of overly stultifying trade unions, and campaigned for less state interference which was preventing entrepreneurial activity. That is what really was their salvation.

She was right. Real conservatives usually are.

And then they drank their own poison too much...they believed it. Ha Joon Chang

It's unsurprising you'd turn to another big government protectionist in place of William Hawkins to defend your belief that only with government interference in the market can we be saved. It's no wonder you cite a statist like Hamilton so often. Like him, you advocate for a bigger central government exercising more control over the economy. How does that square with your admiration for James Madison? You're either conflicted, ignorant or an opportunist.

Let's look at Chang.

consultant to numerous UN agencies and international agencies, including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank

He's also a member of United Nations University WIDER:

Their Mission:

To undertake multidisciplinary research and policy analysis on structural changes affecting the living conditions of the world's poorest people.

To provide a forum for professional interaction and the advocacy of policies leading to robust, equitable and environmentally sustainable growth.

Whoa! Can you say Global Socialist? Say it ain't so, Paul!

What else are they working on?

Advancing Health Equity
Why Inequality Matters in a Globalizing World, by Nancy Birdsall, President of Center for Global Development
2005 WIDER Annual Lecture The World is not Flat: Inequality and Injustice in our Global Economy
Fiscal Policy for Poverty Reduction, Reconstruction, and Growth
Macroeconomic Policy in the Franc Zone (The Franc Zone? WTF?)

Nice source Paul. You've managed to outdo the E.P.I. this time. I just love it when you cite sources that say "government knows best!"

Given this history, argued Friedrich List, the leading German economist of the mid-19th century

Here's where Chang shows his true colors as a big government protectionist. List is best known for arguing in favor of protectionism and government intervention in the economy. His motivations were mostly political as he believed in the need for a unified Germany and saw creating a free trade zone within Germany as a means of bringing together the many principalities. Even so, List viewed protection as a temporary policy to support his heavily discredited infant industry argument.

This lame argument states that that a country can better itself by using temporary protective tariffs to defend its desirable new industries until they can compete successfully in the world market. In the long run it assumes that the economic gain will exceed the cost to consumers who pay higher prices for the good produced by their industry until the protection is removed.

This nonsense assumes that government bureaucrats can pick the correct industries in which to invest scarce capital better than business people can. Government officials tend to favor industries that are politically connected or that are successful elsewhere but may not offer a comparative advantage for the protected country.

With what you know about government dependence, why would anyone expect that the infants protected from competition will ever mature? More likely, the workers and owners of the industry will form a special-interest group and cling to protection, at the expense of consumers.

Both John Stuart Mill and Henry Sidgwick were, at one time, in favor of infant industry protection. They became wiser later in life and rejected the idea. Sidgwick had this to say:

the gain that protection might bring in particular cases is always likely to be more than counterbalanced by the general bad effects of encouraging producers and traders to look to government for aid in industrial crises and dangers, instead of relying on their own foresight, ingenuity and energy.

Only a protectionist or an idiot - not a conservative - would believe that government, with its highly limited information and bureaucrats who have no vested interest in the business, could outsmart the markets.

List also believed in forced capital investment. As if government, not businessmen, know where best to invest capital. Are you in favor of people being told where they are to invest their capital? Doesn't sound conservative to me.

Finally, like you, List believed in a national interest. Once again, this boils down to government telling me what I can buy and from whom. If you believe in this then you've completely disregarded the moral case for the freedom to trade and are posing here as a conservative. What do you have against freedom? Can't the people be trusted?

Great Britain didn't even adopt the doctrine of Free Trade until 1860. Your blather from Paul Kennedy admits...that 1860 was their comparative industrial economic height:

Britain adopted the doctrine of free trade in seriousness when they repealed the corn laws in 1846 and the Navigation Acts in 1849. Bartlett equates the height of free trade in Britain with the signing of Anglo-French Commercial Treaty in 1860. Bartlett and Kennedy are absolutely correct in ther assessment. I understand why big government protectionists would want to revise the facts that so clearly condemn protectionism.

You have been busted by REALITY.

What do you know about reality? Your sources are consistently lefty and big government. You have a lot of nerve coming here and lecturing others about what constitutes real conservatism. Are you with Hamilton or Madison? Do you even know? Or, like so many of your protectionist brethren, are you just in favor of coming down on whatever side of the issue offers an advantage at that time? You're quite the idealist Paul. LOL

At least we agree on what made Thatcher great except you left out her belief, like Reagan, in the freedom to trade. You cannot believe in market freedoms and not the freedom to trade. You extol Thatcherism yet advocate for more control of the economy. You are indeed very conflicted and inconsistent. You are a true protectionist.