1. Simms (2017), p. xiv.
2. Williamson (2011).
3. O’Rourke (1997), p. 791.
4. The figures are taken from the Bank of England’s excellent dataset, a millennium of macroeconomic data, available at https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/statistics/research-datasets.
5. Clark et al. (2014) find, using computable general equilibrium techniques, that the impact of trade on British economic welfare was an order of magnitude higher in the 1850s than in the 1760s.
6. Offer (1989), Lambert (2012). For a recent theoretical exploration of some of the issues involved, see Bonfatti and O’Rourke (2018).
7. Williamson (1990).
8. Irwin (1989). The standard reference on the Repeal of the Corn Laws is the excellent book on the subject by Schonhardt-Bailey (2006).
9. Zebel (1940), pp. 169, 171.
10. Chamberlain (1885).
11. Loughlin (1992), p. 212.
12. Ibid., p. 214.
13. Cited in Evans (2017).
14. ‘The true conception of Empire’, 1897, in which Chamberlain further stated:‘No doubt, in the first instance, when these conquests have been made, there has been bloodshed, there has been loss of life among the native populations, loss of still more precious lives among those who have been sent out to bring these countries into some kind of disciplined order, but it must be remembered that that is the condition of the mission we have to fulfil … You cannot have omelettes without breaking eggs, you cannot destroy the practices of barbarism, of slavery, of superstition, which for centuries have desolated the interior of Africa, without the use of force.’
15. Chamberlain (1903), p. 7.
16. Ibid., p. 18.
17. Ibid., p. ix.
18. Offer (1989), p. 402. The speech on 15 May was cautiously worded, merely asking for public debate on the issue; but it was clear where Chamberlain’s preferences lay.
19. The latter statement is not quite true. Even after the switch to free trade, the UK retained tariffs for revenue-raising purposes on goods that were subject to domestic excise duties (notably alcoholic drinks) or that were not produced at all domestically (e.g, tea and tobacco). French wine imported into Britain was thus subject to tariffs. However, there was no great British wine industry benefiting from this protection, and British beer, whisky and whiskey manufacturers were subject to equivalent excise duties. Douglas Irwin describes British tariffs during the period as ‘the natural extension of domestic excise taxes to foreign goods’ (Irwin, 1993, p. 147). It seems only fair to mention that John Nye (1991, 1993) strongly disagrees with this assessment.
20. Dangerfield (1966), p. 22.
21. Sykes (1979), p. 40.
22. Sykes (1979), p. 35.
23. Coats (1968), p. 184.
24. As the historian Frank Trentmann (2008, p. 185) puts it, ‘Joseph Chamberlain was the best thing that could have happened to Free Trade.’
25. Sykes (1979), p. 285.
26. Offer (1989), Broadberry and Harrison (2005). The argument that Allied victory in the First World War was largely due to economic factors is usefully summarized in https://voxeu.org/article/world-war-i-why-allies-won.
27. http://opac.oireachtas.ie/AWData/Library3/Library2/DL067254.pdf, p. 13.
28. The conference also called for common product standards throughout the Empire because of the advantages these would confer on both consumers and producers, and the increases in trade that would result: shades of the European Single Market of the 1990s. Ibid., pp. 45–6, 54–5.
29. Hansard, Commons Sitting of Thursday, 4 February, 1932.
30. de Bromhead et al. (2019).
31. Condliffe (1941), p. 287.
32. https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/history_e/tradewardarkhour41_e.htm.
33. https://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/gatt47_01_e.htm.
34. Ibid.