Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Expansion Overseas I. The Old Colonial System, 1688-1850 Author(s): P. J. Cain and A. G.

Hopkins Reviewed work(s): Source: The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Nov., 1986), pp. 501-525 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Economic History Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2596481 . Accessed: 03/07/2012 16:08
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EconomicHistory Review, 2nd ser. XXXIX, 4 (i986), pp. 50I-525

Gentlemanly I. The

Capitalism and Overseas Expansion Old Colonial

British

System,

I 688-I850
By P. J. CAIN and A. G. HOPKINS "The first of all the Englishgamesis makingmoney." Ruskin, 'Work'(i865).

suggested that closer attention should be given to the connexions between the slow and uncertain development of British industry and the pace and direction of overseas expansion.1 We also argued that insufficient regard had been paid to the influence of non-industrial forms of capitalism on both overseas development and imperial policy. In the course of that survey, the former problem was dealt with in some detail, whereas the latter was treated briefly and tentatively. The purpose of the present article is to correct this deficiency and to advance a new perspective on British imperialism for the period between the Glorious Revolution and the Second World War. We begin by emphasizing that, despite their many differences, Marxist and non-Marxist historians share a conception of imperialism which is derived from certain broad assumptions about the place of the industrial revolution in modern British history. These assumptions are made explicit in Marxist theories, which attempt to relate empire building to stages in the evolution of industrial capitalism. They also underlie the leading non-Marxist explanations, which emphasize the diverse commercial, political, and cultural forces brought to the fore by industrial progress. Thus, Gallagher and Robinson, though concerned to refute Marxist claims and to avoid charges of economic determinism, nevertheless started from the position that "British industrialization caused an ever-extending and intensifying development of overseas regions", and they proceeded to interpret the rise of free trade and the growth of informal empire from this standpoint.2 The implications of this common approach, based on the story of the "triumph of industry", extend well beyond the boundaries of the nineteenth century. Historians as far apart ideologically
1 P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, 'The Political Economy of British Expansion Overseas, I750-I914', Economic History Review, 2nd ser. xxxiii (i980), pp. 463-90. The authors would like to express their gratitude to the ESRC for personal research grants in aid of this work in i98i and i982-3. 2 J. Gallagher and R. Robinson, 'The Imperialism of Free Trade, i8I5-I9I4', Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. VI (I953), p. 5. Gallagher and Robinson were of course also concerned to show that 'phases of imperialism' did not 'correspond directly to phases in the economic growth of the metropolitan economy'. Ibid. p. 6.

In an earlier survey of the history of British imperialism we

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as Harlow and Wallerstein have agreed that I763 is a watershed between a "mercantilist" empire and the start of a new type of imperialism which owes its unity to the development of industrial capitalism.3 Similarly, whether historians date the beginnings of imperial decline from about i870 or after I9I4, they associate it almost exclusively with the steady erosion of Britain's industrial supremacy.4 We believe that this approach is seriously at variance with what is now known about British economic history during this period. In particular, it draws upon a generalized and somewhat stereotyped view of the industrial revolution which has failed to resolve central questions of causation and periodization in the study of overseas expansion. If the case for reconsidering the current formulation is compelling, the obstacles to constructing an alternative are formidable. The exercise which follows is revisionist in intent, but also exploratory in execution.5 I Since the historiography of this subject has been strongly influenced by the definition of terms, and particularly by their imprecision, it is necessary to begin by stating what it is that needs to be explained. The problem is not only to account for the existence of a vast formal empire but also to understand the presence of imperialist, that is hegemonic, impulses in the wider world. Economic imperialism did not follow automatically from economic dependence. What mattered was whether, and to what degree, a foreign country became an "organic portion"6 of Britain's international economic system, and how far its political and indeed cultural independence were compromised by this relationship. Evidently, a spectrum of possibilities can be envisaged: the United States and parts of western Europe were economically dependent on Britain at various times; republics in South America were sometimes subject to economic imperialism; China experienced imperialist intentions but few of the results. Our aim in this article is to show that the impulses making for imperialism, within the formal empire or outside it, and whether successful or not, cannot be grasped without first comprehending the interaction between economic development and political authority in the metropole. The only ready-made alternative to the view that the link between the metropolitan economy and imperialism was forged by the industrial revolution lies in Schumpeter's and Veblen's theories that imperialism was the product of pre-capitalist, especially aristocratic, forces which mobilized the wealth produced by capitalist industry for militarist and imperialist ends.7 This
T. Harlow, The Founding of the Second British Empire, I763-I793, i, Discovery and Revolution pp. io-i, 64, i66, 593; I. Wallerstein, The Modern World System, ii. Mercantilism and the Consolidationof the European World Economy, i6oo-I750 (New York, i980), p. 258. 4 i870 is the turning point preferred by B. Porter, following Robinson and Gallagher's lead: The Lion's Share: A Short History of British Imperialism, 1850-i970 (I975), p. XI. A case for both dates is made by Ronald Hyam, Britain's Imperial Century(I976), p. 377. 5 It will no doubt be apparent that this is a compressed statement of a much larger work. In selecting from many possible references we have sought to acknowledge particular debts, to document the more contentious claims, and to refer to very recent publications. 6 L. H. Jenks, The Migration of British Capital to i875 (I927, reprinted i963), p. I97. 7 J. A. Schumpeter, Imperialismand the Social Classes (New York, I95i); T. Veblen, Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (New York, I9I5).
3V.
(I952),

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interpretation is interesting because it avoids the assumption that imperialism is a necessary function of industrial capitalism. But it is correspondingly weak in accounting for imperialist drives in societies which were not directed by pre-capitalist aristocracies. Moreover, both Schumpeter and Veblen were concerned mainly to explain German expansion after i870, an example which cannot readily be tailored to fit the British case.8 The view of British history advanced by Anderson and Nairn certainly emphasizes the adaptability of the aristocracy in forestalling a bourgeois revolution;9 and Weiner's contribution also concentrates on the way in which a patrician order, suspicious of capitalist values, tamed an emerging industrial middle class.10 However, these arguments, like Schumpeter's, are predicated on the notion that capitalism has an ideal growth path which is determined by its own laws of development. It follows from this assumption that the main purpose of historical enquiry is to account for deviations from the perceived norm, such as the atavistic exploits of aristocratic imperialists and the failure of a permanently aspiring middle class to rise to power. But, as we shall now try to show, modern British history is not simply the story of a feudal order adapting to an industrial bourgeois one, or of the industrial bourgeoisie's adjustment to traditionalism; nor is there any compelling reason why it should be. The argument we wish to advance begins with the observation that modern British history is bound up with the evolution of several separate but interacting forms of capitalist enterprise-agricultural, commercial, and financial, as well as industrial. This initial statement is not designed to point towards a naive multicausal interpretation which includes everything and therefore explains nothing; nor is it intended to promote a new, albeit broadly based, form of economic determinism. It is indeed hard to avoid that most difficult of terms, capitalism, which-like the Loch Ness monster-is frequently hunted yet is hard to describe and impossible to capture. But if we adopt a wide and non-ideological usage, the term can be given specific historical content without presuming either that it is synonymous with the process of industrialization or that it is driven by an inner logic which treats history as a branch of applied metaphysics.11 This approach involves discarding the assumption that non-industrial forms of capitalist wealth were either mere predecessors of the industrial revolution and were then subsumed by it, or were subservient by-products of one of its subsequent developmental stages. It runs against both an older, heroic, conception of the industrial revolution and a newer, growth-oriented, historiography which tends to equate development with industrialization. Our aim is not to deny what is irrefutable, namely that Britain industrialized, but
8 For an interesting attempt to apply a Schumpeterian analysis to pre-First World War Europe as a whole see A. Mayer, The Persistenceof the Old Regime (i98i). 9 P. Anderson, 'Origins of the Present Crisis', New Left Review 23 (i964), pp. 26-53; T. Nairn, The Break-up of Britain (2nd ed. i98i); also E. P. Thompson, 'The Peculiarities of the English', in idem, The Poverty of Theoryand OtherEssays (I978), pp. 35-9I. 10M. Weiner, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, o850-i980 (Cambridge, i98i). For a summary of the main issues in this debate see P. Warwick, 'Did Britain Change? An Inquiry into the Causes of National Decline', Journal of Contemporary History, 20 (i985), pp. 99-I33. 11 We refer to the pursuit of private profit by rational means which raise productivity and incomes through increased specialization, improved technology, and the postponement of present consumption for the sake of future returns.

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rather to suggest that non-industrial, though still capitalist, activities were much more important immediately before, during, and after the industrial revolution than standard interpretations of economic and imperial history allow. The problem is not how to rewrite the history of industrialization so that it covers still larger stretches of imperial history, but how to fit the industrial revolution into other vigorous types of capitalist enterprise which merit greater emphasis than they have received hitherto. In this context it is not just landed wealth which must be taken into account. The service sector occupied a far larger and more independent place in the economy than has customarily been acknowledged, and specific forms of "service capitalism" had attributes of status and leisure which allowed privileged access to political authority as well as to economic power. 12 Initially, however, the most important form of capitalist wealth in Britain was the rentier capitalism which arose from the ownership of land by a numerically small elite. By the close of the seventeenth century the landed magnates had ceased to be a feudal aristocracy and were ready to embrace a market philosophy. Nonetheless, they were still the heirs of a feudal tradition; and the landed capitalism which evolved in Britain after the Stuarts was heavily influenced by pre-capitalist notions of order, authority and status. Hence the emphasis which continued to be placed on land as an inalienable asset to be passed on intact, as far as possible, through the generations; the assumed primacy of relations, even economic ones, based upon personal loyalties and family connexions; the "studied opposition to the matter-of-fact attitude and business routine";13 the contempt for the everyday world of wealth creation and of the profit motive as the chief goal of activity; and the stress laid on the link between heredity and leadership. Since the prestige of birth, together with independent means, allowed an unusual degree of freedom of action, the landed elite had an authority "beyond any precise professional or functional limits". The "cult of the amateur", so familiar until recent times in every sphere of life from sport to politics~had its origins in this "distinctivebecause innate, hereditary and hence general-character of aristocratic
14 power".

The peculiar characterof the modern British aristocracywas initially shaped by merging its pre-capitalist heritage with incomes derived from commercial agriculture. The landed class controlled the traditional means of authority and was also the most successful element within emergent capitalism. What we call "gentlemanly capitalism" was, therefore, a formidable mix of the venerable and the new: it became the touchstone by which all other economic
12 We hope to substantiate this claim in the present article, but we also wish to emphasize the need for further historical research on this complex and neglected subject. For an interesting discussion of the conceptual issues see J. Bhagwati, 'Splintering and Disembodiment of Services and Developing Nations', in Bhagwati, Essays in DevelopmentEconomics, I (Oxford, i985), pp. 92-I03. 13 R. Bendix, Max Weber(i966 ed.), p. 366. 14 The quotations are taken from J. Powis, Aristocracy (i984), pp. 88-9. In thinking about the relations between land, economy and power we have also benefited from reading: P. Mason, The English Gentleman: The Rise and Fall of an Ideal (i982) and M. Girouard, The Return of Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman (Yale, i98i). Apart from Powis-and, unfortunately, not cited by him-by far the best introductions to this subject can be found in Schumpeter, 'The Rise and Fall of Whole Classes', in his Imperialismand the Social Classes, and in J. Scott, The Upper Classes: Property and Privilege in Britain

(I982).

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activities were judged. The more an occupation or a source of income allowed for a life-style which was similar to that of the landed classes, the higher the prestige it carried and the greater the power it conferred. Just as landed capitalism in Britain in the eighteenth century evolved slowly out of precapitalist hierarchies and status structures and was modified by them, so too the newer forms of economic activity in services and industry adapted themselves to the ideals of gentlemanly conduct.15 The gentlemanly capitalist had a clear understanding of the market economy and knew how to benefit from it; at the same time, he kept his distance from the everyday and demeaning world of work. In an order dominated by gentlemanly norms, production was held in low repute. Working for money, as opposed to making it, was associated with dependence and cultural inferiority. Writing well after modern industry had become an accepted feature of life in Europe and America, Veblen observed that: thereare few of the betterclasswho arenot possessedof an instinctiverepugnance for the vulgar forms of labour ... and vulgarly productiveoccupationsare
unhesitatingly condemned and avoided .... From the days of the Greek philos-

ophersto the present,a degreeof leisureand of exemptionfromcontactwith such industrialprocessesas serve the immediateeverydaypurposesof humanlife has to by ever been recognized thoughtfulmen as a pre-requisite a worthyor beautiful, or even a blameless,humanlife.16 Industrialists who traced their descent from yeomen or gentry referred to themselves in the nineteenth century as "gentleman manufacturers", but the claim, however authentic, was also contradictory because full-time involvement in industry was incompatible with the gentlemanly ideal. The contradiction is seen most clearly in the political sphere. Politically speaking, the trouble with capitalist manufacturing was that it left no time for leadership and for the social activities which were essential to success in public life. Long before the industrial revolution, Harrington commented in Oceana that "mechanics" had neither the leisure nor the qualities needed for politics;17 some time after the event Oscar Wilde observed that socialism would never be achieved in Britain because "it takes too many evenings".18 The division between gentlemanly and ungentlemanly occupations and forms of wealth is similar to Weber's distinction between "propertied" wealth on the one hand and "acquisitive" or "entrepreneurial"wealth on the other. 19
15 In Max Weber(1982), p. 96, F. Parkin argues persuasively that a capitalist system is compatible with a variety of political and social frameworks and that, rather than reshaping them, as Marx implied, capitalism actually adapts itself to these pre-existent frameworks: 'it is less active than acted upon by existing forms of social stratification'. 16 T. Veblen, The Theoryof the Leisure Class: An EconomicStudy of Institutions(I924 ed.), pp. 37-8. 17 J. Harrington, The Model of the Commonwealth Oceana (i656), in J. G. A. Pocock, ed. The Political of Worksof James Harrington(Cambridge, I977), pp. 257-62. 18 Different implications of this observation are discussed by A. 0. Hirschman, Shifting Involvements: Private Interestand Public Action (Princeton, i982), and A. Ryan, Propertyand Political Theory(Oxford, i984), ch. 7. 19 M. Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of InterpretiveSociology, ed. G. Roth and C. Wittich (1978), ch. Iv: 'Status Groups and Classes'. The word "acquisitive" is used instead of "entrepreneurial" or "commercial" in A. M. Henderson and T. Parson's translation of M. Weber, The Theoryof Social and Economic Organization (New York, I947), pp. 424-9. Works we have found useful in helping us to understand both Weber's sociology and how to use it for our purposes include: Parkin, Max Weber;Bendix, Max Weber;S. M. Lipset, 'Social Stratification and Social Class', InternationalEncyclopaediaof the Social Sciences, I5 (i968), pp. 296-3i6; and the same author's 'Values, Patterns, Class and the Democratic Polity: The United States and Great Britain', in R. Bendix and S. M. Lipset, eds. Class, Status and Power: Social

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The first implies a rentier interest, not just in land but in other forms of property, while the second involves active participation in the market and in the creation of goods and services. Weber recognized the generally higher status accorded to propertied wealth and the greater power and authority which it commanded.20 In the present context, however, Weber's categories need modifying to allow for the fact that some forms of "entrepreneurial" wealth were closer to the gentlemanly ideal than others. A line has to be drawn not just between rentiers and entrepreneurs but also, among the latter, between those whose relationship with the productive process was direct and those whose involvement was only indirect. Manufacturing was less eligible than the service sector: even at the highest levels, captains of industry could not command as much prestige as bankers in the City.21 Capitalists could remain (or become) gentlemen if they derived incomes from agricultural or urban property or if they were rentiers drawing on other types of investment, whether public or private. Some non-industrial occupations, because of their remoteness from the world of everyday work and their ability to generate high incomes, also came nearer to the gentlemanly ideal than did the "vile and mechanical"22 world of manufacturing. The higher reaches of the law, the upper echelons of the Church, and the officer class of the armed services all offered opportunities for attaining a gentlemanly life-style. Even the gentleman's gentleman, further down the hierarchy, gained prestige by reflecting the lustre of those he served. And it is worth stressing at this point that, throughout the period under review, British administrators and civil servants were drawn largely from the ranks of those whose economic ties were with landed, rentier or service-sector wealth, rather than with industry. Their social origin and education gave them an extraordinarily high degree of coherence which makes it possible to speak even today of "family life in the Treasury or village life in Whitehall", where ''mutual trust is a pervasive bond" and where business takes place "in the market place exchange of an agreed culture"23-albeit a culture remote from the world of industrial capitalism and often hostile to it. High status could also be achieved by those who were "something in the City" or who, as large merchants, managed to distance themselves from the "shopocracy" of the nation. In view of the prominent position occupied by the financial and commercial activities of the City of London in the ensuing argument, it is important for us to stress that, although the City was a centre of "entrepreneurial" activity in Weber's sense, it rapidly became, in its higher reaches, a branch of gentlemanly capitalism and, as such, exercised a
Stratification Comparative in Perspective(2nd ed. i967), pp. i6i-7I; T. Parsons, 'The Professions and Social Structure', in Parsons, Essays in Sociological Theoty: Pure and Applied (Glencoe, Ill., i949), pp. i85-99; J. Rex, 'Capitalism, Elites and the Ruling Class', in P. Stanworth and A. Giddens, eds. Elites and Power in British Society (Cambridge, I974), pp. 2I2-I9. 20 Weber, Economy and Society, p. 307. 21 This idea is, to some extent, the result of reading D. Lockwood, The Black Coated Worker: Study A in Class Consciousness (I958), esp. pp. 202 ff.; and W. G. Runciman, Social Science and Political Theoty (Cambridge, i965), pp. I37-8. There are also some suggestive comments in G. Ingham, CapitalismDivided? The City and Industty in British Social Development(i984), pp. 240-3, which we read after our own ideas had been formulated. 22 Powis, Aristocracy,p. I0. 23 H. Heclo and A. Wildavsky, The Private Government Public Money (2nd edn. i98i), pp. 2-3. of

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disproportionate influence on British economic life and economic policymaking. Bankers and financiers often rose to prominence in societies dominated by aristocrats because the aristocracy's propensity for "generosity" promoted indebtedness.24 And, as will become clear in the following section, the fate of the City was entwined with that of the aristocracy in Britain after i688 with all the expected consequences in terms of wealth, prestige and incorporation into the body politic.25 The great businesses of the City-private and merchant banking, insurance, broking and acceptance, the activities of the Stock Exchange-generated fortunes which were much greater than those acquired in industry before the twentieth century. These businesses were conducted upon principles which were much closer to the ideals of gentlemanly capitalism fostered by the landed class and their supporters than to the mores of manufacturing, even before mechanization. The City began as, and remained, an extended network of personal contacts based on mutual trust and concepts of honour which were closer to the culture of the country house circuit or the London club than they were to the more impersonal world inhabited by industrialists.26 Moreover, the confidence inspired by reputable bankers or financial intermediaries, such as large merchants, gave them a virtual monopoly of the business of their clients. As Bagehot put it: "an old established bank has a 'prestige', which amounts to a 'privileged opportunity'; though no exclusive right is given by law, a peculiar power is given it by opinion". And he emphasized the fact that "the 'credit' of a person-that is the reliance which may be placed on his pecuniary fidelity-is a different thing from his property".27 Consequently, bankers were able to handle vast amounts of other people's money, while putting relatively small amounts of their own capital into their businesses, with the result that the most successful could earn profits which were immense by the standards of industrial capitalism even in the days of its greatest success after I8I5.28 City activities not only generated large incomes for the established and the lucky, but were also, generally speaking, simple businesses to operate in comparison with industrial organizations.29 The City elites therefore enjoyed greater freedom from daily cares, higher prestige and better openings for political careers, public activities and the exercise of power than leaders of industry;30and, to a lesser degree, the same was true of their financial and commercial imitators in the great outports of the kingdom such as Liverpool. This combination of high profitability, small-firm structure and the gentlemanly nature of the business also meant that City firms provided the most successful and long-running examples of "family capitalism" well into the twentieth century. Moreover, the club-like atmosphere within which City business was transacted ensured that decisions were likely to be taken "on the
Powis, Aristocracy,esp. pp. 5II-3. 25Below pp. 5II-3. 26 For an engaging introduction to City life from the vantage point of the twentieth century see R. Palin, RothschildRelish (I97I). See also S. Chapman, The Rise of MerchantBanking (i984), p. i69. 27 W. Bagehot, 'Lombard Street', in Collected Works,ed. N. St. John-Stevas (I978), IX, pp. I7I, I9I. 28 Ibid. pp. I7I-2.
29
30 24

Ibid. pp.

I7I-2,

I77.

Note the comment of Sir Clinton Dawkins in i900 after moving from the Colonial Civil Service into the City: "I am happy enough in the City but there is not enough to do there, and I feel the want of handling big questions again". Quoted in Chapman, MerchantBanking, p. i69.

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basis of particularist and moralistic" assumptions to a greater degree than was the case in industry.31 Gentlemanly capitalism did not hold sway to the same extent in the joint stock banks which developed in the nineteenth century.32 Nevertheless, directors of joint stock banks enjoyed high prestige; and the boards of these banks were often dominated by City gentlemen.33 Bankers, financiers and others in the commercial world also shared with the landed interest and the more prestigious members of the service sector a relative immunity from the stresses of class conflict in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Industrialists were the shock troops of capitalism, and the hostility which they generated from the late eighteenth century onward undermined some of the authority which wealth would otherwise have given them. However antagonistic they might have been to the landed magnates and their associates, the pressures of class conflict often forced industrialists to come to terms with gentlemanly capitalism to create a broad front of propertied interests. Given their indirect relationship with the productive process, and their paternalist relations with their own more fragmented and less class-conscious workforce, gentlemanly capitalists could present themselves more easily as "natural" leaders, while also benefiting from developments in which industrial capitalism was the most visible agent of change.34 Indeed, British industrialists were constantly trapped between a gentlemanly culture, which flourished upon capitalist wealth but derided the technology upon which that wealth depended, and radical trades unionism and other working men's associations, which exalted production but attacked the profit motive. The gentleman capitalist was not a paradox: on the contrary, his ethics assisted his enterprise, which was concerned with managing men rather than machines. Tom Paine's jibe that the nobility were men of no ability is not lacking in illustrious examples;35 but the feudal remnants, and the tendency for aristocrats and gentlemen to behave in an "economically irrational" manner,36 could be useful assets in occupations which placed a premium on organizing men and information rather than on processing raw materials. High finance, like high farming, called for leadership from "opinion-makers" and trust from associates and dependents. A gentleman possessed the qualities needed to inspire confidence; and because his word was his bond transactions were both informal and efficient. Shared values, nurtured by a common education and religion, provided a blueprint for social and business behaviour. The country house led to the counting house; the public school fed the service
31 M. Lisle-Williams, 'Beyond the Market: The Survival of Family Capitalism in the English Merchant Banks', British Journal of Sociology, xxxv (i984), p. 24I. 32 Their vast size, and the technical and rather impersonal nature of the business in the nineteenth century, meant that the managers who were "tied to the business" and "devoted to it" were put on a par, socially speaking, with the managers of industrial concerns. See Bagehot, LombardStreet, p. i88. See also M. de Cecco, 'The Last of the Romans', in R. Skidelsky, ed. The End of the KeynesianEra (I977), p. 20. 33 On this relationship in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries see Y. Cassis, Les banquiers idouardienne,i890-1914 (Geneva, i984). For a different approachto the question of City de la City a l'e'poque power and influence see G. Ingham, 'Divisions within the Dominant Class and British "Exceptionalism"', in A. Giddens and G. Mackenzie, eds. Social Class and the Division of Labour: Essays in Honour of Ilya

Neustadt i982), (Cambridge,

34 35
36

pp.

209-27. I,

Weber, Economy and Society, pp. 93I-2. T. Paine, Rights of Man, in The Political and MiscellaneousWorksof ThomasPaine (i8i9), Weber, Economy and Society, p. 307.

p. 75.

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sector; the London club supported the City. Gentlemanly enterprise was strongly personal, and was sustained by a social network which, in turn, was held together by the leisure needed to cultivate it. The predominance of ingroup marriage, like the elaboration of techniques of heirship to entail property, was not a gesture to traditionalism, but a strategy to reinforce group solidarity, to create economic efficiency and political stability, and to take out an option on the future by ensuring dynastic continuity. Social proximity was aided by geographical concentration; both came together in London, the focal point of the gentleman and his activities. In this world conspicuous consumption was not merely wasteful; it was a public manifestation of substance, a refined advertisement which used hospitality to sustain goodwill, to generate new connexions and to exclude those of low income or low repute.37 In describing how ethics fit actions, our aim has been to establish the characteristics of gentlemanly capitalism, not to pass judgement on it. We have deliberately avoided adopting the radical distinction between productive and unproductive labour, for instance, not only because it is hedged with difficulties of definition but also because it does not recognize the capitalist qualities of the activities we have identified or any interaction between gentlemanly enterprise and industry.38 What can be said, however, is that the bias of incomes and status favoured gentlemanly occupations to a much greater extent than standard accounts of British economic history allow, and that the attributes of the leisured amateur, though highly effective in his own sphere of enterprise, were not well suited to the needs of "scientific rationalism".39 Cobdenite entrepreneurial ideologies which stressed the need for a social revolution to place the industrial bourgeoisie at the centre of the social and political stage faced formidable barriers, even at the high point of the industrial revolution.40 The impressive success of gentlemanly capitalism in its landed form until i850 and the growing wealth and power of service capitalism after that date meant that manufacturers who sought prestige and authority often had to adapt to gentlemanly ideals. And players could become gentlemen only by abandoning the attitudes or even the occupations which had brought them their original success.41 The industrial revolution emerged out of an already highly successful capitalist system, and it took place without any fundamental transformation of property ownership. The benefits of the dynamic growth of manufacturing, whether via the division of labour or through the advent of machinery, were bound to lead, in these circumstances, to a large proportion of the gains accruing to non-industrial forms of property.42
37 See the very interesting recent attempt to employ Veblen's concept of conspicuous consumption in A an historical context by R. S. Mason, Conspicuous Consumption: Study of ExceptionalConsumer Behaviour (i98i). Conspicuous consumption and intermarriage are examples of what Weber called "social closure", a phenomenon recently examined in F. Parkin, Marxism and Class Theory:A BourgeoisCritique(1979). 38 For a brief look at the radical argument in the context of Hobson's theory of finance capitalism, see P. J. Cain, 'Hobson, Wilshire and the Capitalist Theory of Capitalist Imperialism', History of Political Economy, I7 (I985), pp. 455-60. 39 This theme is discussed in D. C. North, Structureand Change in EconomicHistory (Toronto, i98i), chs. I2-I3. 40 See P. J. Cain, 'Capitalism, War and Internationalism in the Thought of Richard Cobden', British Journal of InternationalStudies, v (I979), pp. 229-48. 41 D. C. Coleman, 'Gentlemen and Players', Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. XXVI (I973), pp. 92-116. 42 W. D. Rubinstein, 'Entrepreneurial Effort and Entrepreneurial Success: Peak Wealth Holding in Three Societies, i850-I930', Business History, xxv (i983), p. I7.

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One result of this development was that, in a society which was only slowly becoming democratic even in the early twentieth century,43 and where power was concentrated in the hands of wealthy elites, manufacturersneither owned enough "top wealth" nor made it in a sufficiently acceptable way to be able to impose their will on the political system. In the nineteenth century the industrial bourgeoisie in Britain was forced to come to terms with gentlemanly capitalism: it modified rather than superseded it, and in turn felt the weight of its compelling influence. Marx's assumption that industrial capitalism was the dominantforce after i85o and that the "moneyed interests" were subservient to it44 is overdrawn, as we shall see. The links between gentlemanly capitalism and overseas expansion are examined in what follows. Rather than distinguishing between mercantile and industrial phases of overseas expansion or contrasting formal and informal techniques of control, we suggest that British imperialism is best understood by relating it to two broad phases in the development of gentlemanly capitalism. Between i688 and i850 the dominant element was the landed interest: after i8 o it was succeeded by the financial and commercial magnates of the City and the wealthiest and most influential elements arising from the growth of services in the south-east of England. As we shall try to demonstrate, these two phases of gentlemanly capitalism and the transition between them left an enduring mark on Britain's presence abroad. The discussion which follows will focus on the period i688-i850; the period i850-I945 will be dealt with in the sequel to this article. II The period i688-i850 owes its unity to the economic and political dominance of a reconstructed and commercially progressive aristocracywhich derived its power from land. Agriculture remained the most important activity for the greater part of the period, whether measured by its share of national income, by its contribution to employment, or by its ability to generate large fortunes.45 Agricultural improvement raised productivity, increased income from rents, and helped to lift land values.46 As the landed interest threw off the last
43 It is worth remembering that in I914 Hungary was the only other European country which shared with the United Kingdom the dubious distinction of not having manhood suffrage. The vote "was still something dependent on a successful claim to possession" and "a privilege purchased through property". See H. C. G. Matthew, R. I. McKibbin and J. A. Kay, 'The Franchise Factor in the Rise of the Labour Party', English Historical Review, XCI(I976), pp. 723-6. 44 'The complete rule of industrial capital was not acknowledged by English merchants' capital and moneyed interests until after the abolition of the duties on corn, etc.', K. Marx, Capital, iII (i909 ed.), p. 385 n. 47. Ch. 38 and p. 385 ff. are also of great interest in this context. 45 The problems of evaluating relative sectoral shares with any precision during this period are too well known to require further comment in this article. We follow here N.F.R. Crafts, 'British Economic Growth, 1700-i83I: A Review of the Evidence', Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. xxxvi (i983), pp. 177-99, and C. H. Feinstein, 'Capital Formation in Great Britain', in P. Mathias and M. M. Postan, eds. The Cambridge Economic History of Europe (Cambridge, I978), vii, pt. I, pp. 28-96. 46 Guides to these subjects include: J. V. Beckett, 'The Pattern of Landownership in England and Wales, i66o-i88o', Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. xxxvii (i984), pp. 1-22; R. V. Jackson, 'Growth and Deceleration in English Agriculture, i660-I790', Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. xxxviii (i985), pp. 333-5I; and J. R. Wordie, 'Rent Movements and the English Tenant Farmer, I700-i839', Research in Economic History, 6 (i98i), pp. I93-243-

GENTLEMANLY

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5II

traces of feudalism, eliminating the threat not of a rising bourgeoisie but of conservative farmers, so too it increased its grip on the levers of power in the aftermathof the Civil War. After I688 the magnates consolidated their political authority as they consolidated their estates.47 These "great oaks", as Burke called them, shaded the country because they possessed, in land, a form of wealth which also carried the supreme badge of authority, being permanent, prestigious, and allowing time for affairs of state. The control exercised by the peerage over the House of Commons remained undisturbed before i832 and was only slowly eroded thereafter, while its dominance of the executive lasted well beyond i850.48 Social exclusiveness was maintained by intermarriages; ideological cohesion was demonstrated by support for the Church of England; and cultural homogeneity was shaped by the public schools, whose pupils, "the glory of their country", in Defoe's judgement, were set apart from their contemporaries, "the mere outsides of gentlemen", who were educated by private tutors.49 The most important economic development outside agriculture in the eighteenth century was the financial revolution based in London and centred upon the foundation of the Bank of England, the creation of the national debt, and the rise of the Stock Exchange.50 Further impetus was given to these innovations by the decline of Amsterdam, which enabled London to emerge as the world's leading financial centre from the I780s, by the influx of refugee bankers during the French wars, which enhanced the City's international expertise, and by the adoption of the gold standard, which evolved from the early eighteenth century and was confirmed in i8ig.51 At the close of the period under review, when other monopolies had been destroyed, the Bank Act of i844 endorsed the Bank of England's exclusive rights and defined its unique role as a central bank. Closely associated with these developments was the growth of other activities in the service sector.52 International trade and shipping were stimulated from the beginning of the period by the Navigation Acts, and subsequently by innovations (ranging from bills of exchange to insurance) which greatly improved the efficiency of transactions.53 It was
47 Recent studies of this process include G. Cannon, ed. The Whig Ascendancy(i98i), and L. Colley, of 'Eighteenth-Century Radicalism before Wilkes', Transactions the Royal HistoricalSociety, 3I (i98i), pp. i-i9, and In Defiance of Oligarchy: The Tory Party, 1714-60 (Cambridge, i982). 48 M. W. McCahill, Orderand Equipoise:The Peerage and theHouse of Lords, 1783-i806 (I978); J. Slack, 'The House of Lords and ParliamentaryPatronage in Great Britain, i802-32', HistoricalJournal, 23 (i980), England (Cambridge, i984). Century:The Peerage of Eighteenth-Century pp. 9I3-37; J. Cannon, Aristocratic 49 Quoted in Cannon, Aristocratic Century,p. 39. 50 Our thinking on this subject owes a great deal to P. G. M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit, i688-1756 (i967), and J. G. A. Pocock, The to Machiavellian Moment: The Florentine Contribution the Atlantic Republican Tradition(Princeton, I975), and 'The Machiavellian Moment Revisited: A Study in History and Ideology', Journal of ModernHistory, 53 (i98i), pp. 49-72. 51 J. C. Riley, InternationalGovernment Finance and the AmsterdamCapital Market, i740-I815 (Cambridge, i980); S. D. Chapman, 'The International Houses: The Continental Contribution to British Economic Development, i800-i86o', Journal of European Economic History, 6 (i977), pp. 5-48; F. W. Fetter, The Developmentof British Monetary Orthodoxy,1797-i875 (Cambridge, Mass. i965). 52 Recent evidence, summarized by Crafts, has drawn attention to the importance of this sector in the eighteenth century, whether measured by employment or by source of income. See N. F. R. Crafts, British EconomicGrowthDuring the Industrial Revolution (Oxford, i985), pp. I2-I3, i6-I7. 53 R. Davis, The Rise of the English Shipping Industryin the Seventeenth and EighteenthCenturies(2nd ed. I972); idem, English Merchant Shipping and Anglo-Dutch Rivalry in the Seventeenth Century (i975); J. Sperling, 'The International Payments Mechanism in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries', Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. XIV (i962), pp. 446-68; C. G. Reed, 'Transactions Costs and Differential Growth in Seventeenth-Century Europe', Journal of EconomicHistory, 33 (i973), pp. I77-90.

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during this period, too, that a number of prominent occupations acquired the status of "professions" and their members became acknowledged as "gentlemen".54 Georgian England doubtless harboured habits of thrift, without which capital accumulation could not have taken place, but it also promoted the virtues of luxury expenditure and advertised, with appropriate ostentation, the gentlemanly ethos of conspicuous consumption.55 Taken together, these developments in agriculture and finance gave both shape and momentum to British history after i688. They produced a powerful rentier interest linked to a constellation of new and expanded service occupations, and they left a permanent imprint on the polity as well as on the economy. Manufacturers, like merchants, were important and familiar figures on the landscape in i688.56 The woollen industry made a vital contribution to domestic employment, export earnings, and state revenues during the eighteenth century. The cotton industry performed a similar role, on an even larger scale, in the nineteenth century. At the same time it must also be acknowledged, in the light of recent research, that industrialization was a much slower process than was once thought. There was no marked upward shift in the contribution made by manufacturing to national output in the I740s; the spurt of the I780s was confined largely to cotton goods; and it was not until the i820S that the quantitative weight of new industries imposed itself on the economy as a whole.57 Even then, however, the success of new industrial forces was qualified. The number of fortunes amassed by industrialists did not compare with those derived from land and from the financial and service sector, and industry's direct political influence remained limited long after the reform of i832, not least because the Bounderbys of the midlands and the north of England (as they were increasingly portrayed by spokesmen in the south) had neither the time nor the social connexions to shape national policy, which was directed by the "landocracy" and its allies in London.58 The principal challenge to aristocratic dominance in the eighteenth century came from the monied interest.59 Commentators from Defoe to Burke were
Geoffrey Holmes, Augustan England: Professions,State, and Society, i68o-i730 (i982). G. Vichert, 'The Theory of Conspicuous Consumption in the Eighteenth Century', in P. Hughes and D. Williams, eds. The Varied Pattern: Studies in the EighteenthCentury(Toronto, I97i), pp. 253-76; N. Society (i982). McKendrick, J. Brewer and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer 56 The ideal of a purely agrarianorder had been given up by the i620S if not before. See B. E. Supple, CommercialCrisis and Change in England, i600-i642 (Cambridge, I959), p. 72. 57 Crafts, 'British Economic Growth'; C. K. Harley, 'British Industrialization before i84I: Evidence of Slower Growth during the Industrial Revolution', J. Econ. Hist. 42 (i982), pp. 267-90; P. H. Lindert, 'Remodelling British Economic History: A Review Article', J. Econ. Hist. 43 (i983), pp. 986-92. 58 W. D. Rubinstein, 'The Victorian Middle Classes: Wealth, Occupation, and Geography', Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. xxx (I977), pp. 602-23; 'Wealth, Elites, and the Class Structure of Modern Britain', Past& Present, 76 (I977), pp. 99-I26. 59 The vast literature on this subject can be approached through J. G. A. Pocock, ed. ThreeBritish Revolutions: i64i, i688, 1776 (Princeton, i980); 'The Machiavellian Moment Revisited'; 'The Political Economy of Burke's Analysis of the French Revolution', Hist. J. 25 (i982), pp. 33I-49. See also C. B. Macpherson, Burke (Oxford, i980) and I. Kramnick, 'Republican Revisionism Revisited', American Historical Review, 87 (i982), pp. 629-64. Kramnick is right to suggest that the nature of the problem began to change after 1760, but his attempt to link this change to the forces thrown up by industrialization does not take account of recent work on the British economy and exaggerates the impact of new industries at this time. On the lack of controversy over industrialization in the eighteenth century see M. S. Anderson, Historians and Eighteenth-Century Europe (i979), ch. 4.
54 55

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5I3

agreed that novel forms of wealth based on paper instruments were producing a new social order, and they were divided, as was the landed interest, about its desirability. The national debt funded the defence of the realm but also raised the spectre of national bankruptcy; the rapid advance of representatives of the City to positions of privilege shook traditional notions of social order. The South Sea Bubble's sizeable financial consequences were matched by its far-reaching social effects, which caused gentlemen to be raised and ruined overnight. Manufacturers, by contrast, posed no such threat to economic ideology or to the social hierarchy. The leading industry, woollen cloth, had an established rural base, well distanced from London, and its interests fell under the paternal control of magnates like the Rockinghams, who included cloth producers among the many "tenants" they "virtually represented" in Parliament. The new industries, it is true, were not part of the natural constituency of the landed interest, but they presented no serious problems of incorporation in the eighteenth century. Indeed, landowners responded to industrialization by retreating from the manufacturing sector at the close of the century, adjusting as rentiers by leasing rights over land; and merchants who expanded their operations moved towards banking, shipping and allied services rather than into manufacturing.60 Down to i8I5 the claims of manufacturers and of other special interest groups, such as the outports, were met primarily by adjustments of economic policy which offered protection and markets.61The claims of the City required a more comprehensive response which resulted, in the course of the eighteenth century, in the acceptance of new financial institutions and the incorporation of leading members of the monied interest into the inner circles of political and social influence. The economic case for accepting the monied interest was compelling: its expertise was crucial to managing the national debt and to financing the continental wars which were the price of installing an imported monarchy and upholding the Revolution Settlement.62 Social integration was greatly helped by affinities in the life-styles of financiers and magnates, and was readily sealed by marriage.63 By the end of the century City financiers and their associates, the merchant princes of London, had founded dynasties, acquired country estates, and been given titles. A close and enduring alliance had already been formed between land and finance long before the industrial revolution made its mark on the economy.64
60 F. Crouzet, The First Industrialists: The Problem of Origins (Cambridge, i985), pp. 68, 77, 80-4; and M. W. McCahill, 'Peers,Patronage, the Industrial Revolution,I760-i800', journal of British Studies, i6 (I976), pp. 84-I07; D. Spring,'EnglishLandowners Nineteenth-Century and Industrialization', J. in

T. Ward and R. G. Wilson, eds. Land and Industry: The Landed Estate and the Industrial Revolution (NewtonAbbott, I971), pp. 5I-2.
61 62

of see For a pragmatic interpretation 'mercantilism' D. C. Coleman,'Mercantilism Revisited',Hist.

pp. 773-9I.

j. 23 (i980),

Powerand Profitin Economic For one examplesee L. Neal, 'Interpreting History:A CaseStudyof the SevenYearsWar',j. Econ. Hist. 37 (I977), pp. 85-IOI. 63 A recently studiedexampleis that of the Hoares,a bankingfamilywhichformedmarriage with ties and the EnglishandIrishpeerage alsowith the new breedof nabobsspawned the EastIndiaCompany. by to to We aregrateful Dr G. C. A. Clayfor permission cite his unpublished paper,'HenryHoare, Banker, Estate'. and the Buildingof the Stourhead 64 Dickson,Financial Revolution, p. 282; A. C. Carter, Getting, Spendingand Investing in Early Modern Times (Assen, The Netherlands,I975), p. i06; D. Jarrett,'The Myth of "Patriotism" Eighteenthin CenturyEnglishPolitics', in J. S. Bromleyand E. H. Kossmann,eds. Britainand theNetherlands, V of (1975), p. I24; N. Rogers, 'Money, Land and Lineage:The Big Bourgeoisie Hanoverian London',

5I4

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A.

G.

HOPKINS

The cost of sustaining the new order can be measured by the increase in the national debt and by the expansion of the patronage system. Expenditure on government and defence, the fastest growing sector in the eighteenth century, began to increase after I739 and reached new heights at the close of the century with the outbreak of the French Wars, which raised the public debt to ?700 million in I8I5.65 The "opportunity state", founded by Walpole and enlarged by his successors, created light work for many hands and bought the loyalty of disaffected country gentry. As the century advanced, the weight of public expenditure began to make itself felt. Moreover, this trend was not offset by economic growth. On the contrary, recent evidence indicates that there was little increase in per capita output or income in the second half of the eighteenth century; indeed, real incomes probably fell between I760 and I780.66 Since the tax system was highly regressive, and the land tax in particular was held down to retain the support of the landed interest, the main burden of public expenditure was borne by the mass of consumers.67 Discontent mounted, and there were recurrent crises of public order in the I760s, 8os and 90S.68 The social and regional bases of the movements led by Wilkes and Wyvill were very different, but they had in common demands for greater accountability and efficiency in public affairs. These were crises not of an old regime but of a new one, and they flowed not from the industrial revolution but from the financial revolution. The eighteenth-century amalgam of patronage and protection also came under attack from commentators who perceived that expanding commercial services and new industries could gain from measures which promoted more competitiveness in the market and less interference by the state. Pitt's tentative moves towards "economical reform" and freer trade in the I780s were designed to placate irate taxpayers and to curtail the growth of the national debt by increasing revenue from customs duties. In taking these steps, Pitt was reinforcing an oligarchic system, not beginning a bourgeois revolution.69
Social History, 4 (I979), pp. 438-40, 442-4; R. Pares, 'A London West India House', in Pares, The Historian'sBusiness (Oxford, i96i), pp. i98-226; R. B. Grassby, 'English Merchant Capitalism in the Late Seventeenth Century: the Composition of Business Fortunes', Past & Present, 46 (I970), pp. 87-I07; L. S. Sutherland, A London Merchant, i695-I774 (I933), pp. I5-i6, i8-2I, ch. 3. 65 Carter, Getting, Spending and Investing, p. I I; Riley, InternationalGovernment Finance, pp. I25-6; P. Mathias, The First Industrial Nation (2nd ed. i983), p. 39. 66 Crafts, 'British Economic Growth', pp. i87, I94, i98-9; C. H. Feinstein, 'Capital Accumulation and the Industrial Revolution', in R. Floud and D. McCloskey, eds. The Economic History of Britain Since I700 (Cambridge, i98i), I, p. I4I; L. D. Schwarz, 'The Standard of Living in the Long Run: London, 1700-i860', Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. XXXVIII(i985), pp. 29-3I, 34-6. 67 P. Mathias and P. O'Brien, 'Taxation in Britain and France, I7I5-i8io: A Comparison of the Social and Economic Incidence of Taxes Collected for the Central Government', j. Eur. Econ. Hist. 5 (I976), pp. 60i-50; P. Mathias, The Transformation England (I979), chs. 6 and I5; C. Brooks, 'Public Finance of and Political Stability: the Administration of the Land Tax, I688-I720', Hist. j. I7 (I974), pp. 28I-300. 68 Recent assessments include: J. Stevenson, Popular Disturbancesin England, I700-I870 (I979); J. Brewer, 'English Radicalism in the Reign of George III', in Pocock, ed. ThreeBritish Revolutions,pp. 32367; Kramnick, 'Republican Radicalism'; C. Emsley, British Society and the French Wars, I 793-I8I5 (I979); and H. T. Dickinson, British Radicalism and the French Revolution, I789-I8I5 (i985). 69 Neither government nor industry experienced a rapid conversion to free trade. John Ehrman, The British Governmentand CommercialNegotiations with Europe, I783-93 (Cambridge, i962), p. I93; C. R. Ritcheson, 'The Earl of Shelbourne and Peace with America, I782-I783: Vision and Reality', International Historical Review, v (i983), pp. 323-45; D. J. Jeremy, 'Damming the Flood: British Government Efforts to Check the Outflow of Technicians and Machinery, 1780-I843', Business HistoryReview, LI (I977), pp. I-34; D. Farnie, The English Cotton Industryand the WorldMarket, I8I5-96 (1979), p. 97.

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Moreover his experiments were halted by the outbreak of the French Wars, which also provided the government with an opportunity of countering radical criticism by appealing to the solidifying forces of nationalism. The cost of the wars postponed reform in the public sector by swelling the size of the national debt; fear of Jacobinism brought propertied interests together and encouraged political conservatism.70 In one sense, therefore, "old corruption" continued to expand down to i8I5. Behind the scenes, however, significant changes were taking place. After about i 8oo, there was a growing awareness that Britain's ability to defend herself against larger powers depended critically upon the pace of economic development; and it was recognized, too, that development had indeed been taking place over a long period, though no special emphasis was attached, at the time, to the new mechanized industries.71 It was also generally agreed that this process was a result of the considerable degree of freedom enjoyed by the domestic economy, and that this was one of the liberties guaranteed by the Glorious Revolution.72 Britain's strength and social stability thus relied upon continuing capitalist development which, in the eyes of those who determined policy, was in the interest of the poor, the "middling orders" and the rich alike. Moreover, this brand of capitalism was perceived to rest upon a foundation of law and custom which the gentlemanly elite could fairly claim to have created and sustained. Cheap government and freer trade were not policies thrust upon a declining aristocracy by rising industrial capitalists following the defeat of France. The deep cuts in public expenditure after i8I5, the return to gold in i8i9, the tariff reductions of the i820S, and the progressive withdrawal of the state from direct participation in the economic process73 were all initiated by the gentlemanly elite. These measures were positive, if belated, responses to the socioeconomic changes set in train by the innovations of the eighteenth century and, more immediately, to the impact of the war with France. Reform had the broad support of the propertied interest, and it confirmed the power and authority of the gentlemanly order. Only an elite whose gentlemanly traditions were shot through with capitalist assumptions could have attempted such a drastic shift in policy and have responded so flexibly to pressures from below. And only an elite with these qualities could have recognized, in the i820S, that the looming imbalance between population growth and food supply was weakening the dominance of agricultureand increasing the need to move towards a more open economy.74 These policy changes, like the political concessions of i832, were astute moves
70 The widereconomic of consequences the FrenchWarsaredealtwith by J. G. Williamson, 'Whywas Revolution?' Econ.Hist. XLIX (i984), pp. 687-7I2. On BritishGrowthso Slow duringthe Industrial J. in 'OldWhigs,Old Toriesandthe American the 'newconservatism' politicssee P. Langford, Revolution',

in P. Marshall and G. Williams, eds. The British Atlantic Empire Before the AmericanRevolution (ig80), of pp. io6-30;and L. Colley,'The Apotheosis GeorgeIII: Loyalty,Royaltyandthe BritishNation, I760I820', P. & P. I02 (i984), pp. 94-I29. 71 J. E. Cookson, 'Political Arithmetic and War in Britain, I793-i8I5', War and Society, I (i983), pp. 37-60. 72 J. E. Cookson,'BritishSocietyand the FrenchWars, I783-i8I5', Australianjournal of Politics and History, 3I (i985), pp. I92-203. 73 Hilton, Corn, Cash and Commerce: The EconomicPolicies of the Tory Government,i815-i830 (Oxford

BritishSocietyand the Legacyof the NapoleonicWars', I977), esp. ch. 2; N. Gash, 'AfterWaterloo:
Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc. 5th ser. 28 (1978), pp. I45-57. 74 Hilton, Corn, Cash and Commerce,esp. ch. 4 and pp. 305-6.

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to prevent the erosion of landed power by placating and incorporating the more successful of the new men produced by economic and social change.75 In implementing reform, the landed interest was responding not only to the rise of mechanized industry, important though that was, but to the results of economic growth on a broad front: the Reform Act of i832 put the seal of political respectability upon new property in the south of England as well as on that created by the industrial revolution in the provinces. The legislation of i840-60, which finally installed free trade, established "Gladstonian orthodoxy" in public finance, and ended the reign of the last chartered companies, was the logical outcome of measures begun in the period I8I5-30.76 But it is also true that the assertiveness of provincial industry, spearheaded by the rise of the Anti-Corn Law League, increased dramatically from the late I830s.77 Fierce competition and falling prices, both at home and abroad, meant that rapid economic growth, while boosting the importance of mechanized industry in the economy, also contributed to a continuing crisis of excess capacity and low profitability.78 This crisis was at its worst in the depression of i837-42, when a sharp rise in urban unemployment fuelled the unrest which expressed itself in the Chartist movement.79 Failure to solve these problems by imperialist measures abroad80only served to emphasize industry's desire for free trade as a means of cutting costs. The result was that free trade was pushed further and faster than was thought expedient by the bulk of the landed interest. The budgets of i842 and i845 were additional modifications to a protectionist system;81but repeal of the Corn Laws, despite Peel's sincere assumptions to the contrary,82 was a surrender to free trade which, a generation later, began to erode the profitability of arable agriculture in Britain and, with it, the wealth and power of the landed interest.83
75 M. Brock, The Great Reform Act (I973) is the standard work. See also F. O'Gorman, 'Electoral Deference in "Unreformed" England, I760-i830', J. Mod. Hist. 56 (i984), esp. pp. 426-7; and E. A. Wasson, 'The Great Whigs and Parliamentary Reform, i809-i830', J. Br. Stud. 24 (i985), pp. 434-64. 76 Hilton argues that 'the Whigs could not afford concessions on economic policy because the only hope of winning office was by economic bribes to the country gentry'. Consequently, economic reforms were postponed in the i830S. The Tories, on the other hand, tried to stave off political reform in the i82os and in the i840s, by making economic concessions to the enemies of the landed interest: Hilton, Corn, Cash and Commerce,pp. 306-7. 77 For the rise of the 'cottonocracy' as a counterforce to the landed aristocracy see A. Howe, The Cotton Masters, I830-I860 (Oxford, I984). 78 Recently emphasized by R. A. Church, ed. The Dynamicsof Victorian Business (i980), esp. ch. i. On the foreign front see J. K. J. Thomson, ' "British" Industrialization and the External World: A Unique Experience or Archetypal Model?', in M. Bienefeld and M. Godfrey, eds. National Strategies in an InternationalContext (i982), pp. 65-92. 79 The cyclical crises are still best described by R. C. 0. Matthews, A Study in Trade Cycle History, i833-i842 (Cambridge, I954), esp. pp. 209-I7. 80 Cf. p. 523 below. 81 As late as i843 Peel was trying to encourage the development of Canadian trade by increasing the preferences on wheat coming to Britain from the St. Lawrence region. R. L. Schuyler, The Fall of the Old Colonial System (I945), pp. I42-4. 82 D. C. Moore, 'The Corn Laws and High Farming', Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. XXVII(i965), pp. 5446i. Peel believed that agriculture could survive if it became more responsive to market forces. For the impact of the Corn Laws during the generation after repeal, see W. Vamplew, 'The Protection of English Cereal Producers: The Corn Laws Reassessed', Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. xxxiii (ig80), pp. 382-95, which shows that cereal prices were seriously affected by foreign competition before the i86os. 83 Although free trade accelerated the economic and political decline of the landed interest, it cannot be automatically assumed that, in the long run, continued protection would have helped the aristocracy to retain power long. Protection would have slowed down growth, lowered real wages and, by intensifying class conflict, might have brought demands for sweeping changes in property relations. On the relation

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Although free trade eventually undermined the authority of the particular form of gentlemanly capitalism which had arisen from the settlement of i688, it ought not to be seen as a victory for the representatives of the industrial revolution in the sense that, henceforth, they were to be the dominant force, ideologically and politically, in the making of economic policy. Free trade was as much a triumph for City interests as it was for the major export industries.84 Initially, the assault on "old corruption" after i8I5 involved an attempt by governments to emancipate themselves from the power of financial interests vested in the national debt. As such, it was deeply resented by some elements in the City. 85 But one effect of reform was that the City, like industry, had to look abroad for new areas of expansion; and recent research suggests that commercial reform and the return to gold were designed to make Britain the warehouse of the world rather than its workshop.86 The skills which the City had developed in domestic finance helped to launch sterling on an international career at the close of the eighteenth century, when invisible earnings began to assume a new and enduring importance in the balance of payments.87Overseas investment, together with opportunities on the domestic front, notably in railways after i830,88 provided a new basis for rentier fortunes as the eighteenth century edifice of public debt and patronage withered away. Moreover, despite attempts to achieve financial autonomy in the late eighteenth century, many prominent export interests became dependent on City credit for their overseas operations to such an extent that, for example, the profits of the cotton industry were seriously impaired.89 The City, as the centre of a dynamic service economy, was a leading beneficiary of free trade and minimal government.90 III The preoccupation of imperial historians with mercantilism and with the rise of industry has obscured the ways in which the dominant forms of gentlemanly capitalism, headed by the landed interest, imprinted themselves on Britain's overseas presence in the period between the Glorious Revolution and the mid-nineteenth century. High farming and high culture, adapted to
between free trade and growth see D. N. McCloskey, 'Magnanimous Albion: Free Trade and British National Income, i84I-i88i', Explorations in Economic History, I7 (ig80), pp. 303-20; P. J. Cain, 'Professor McCloskey on British Free Trade, i84I-i88i: Some Comments', ibid. i9 (i982), pp. 20I-7; and McCloskey's reply, ibid. pp. 208-io. 84 The exact role of the City in the debates of the i83os and i840s needs close investigation. For Rothschild's views see B. Davis, The Rothschilds(i983), pp. 68-9. 85 Hilton, Corn, Cash, and Commerce,pp. 56ff. 86 Ibid. p. 63. 87 One important strand in this development was the British role as financiers of the allies in the Napoleonic Wars. See P. Sherwig, Guineas and Gunpowder(i969). See also Chapman, 'The International Houses'. 88 M. C. Reed, Investmentin Railways in Britain, i820-i844 (Oxford, I975). 89 S. D. Chapman, 'British Marketing Enterprise: The Changing Role of Merchants, Manufacturers and Financiers, I700-i860', Bus. Hist. Rev. LIII (I979), esp. pp. 32I-3, and 'Financial Restraints on the Growth of Firms in the Cotton Industry', Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. XXXII(I979), esp. p. 58. There is some evidence that industrialists were already putting their savings into safe foreign and home investments marketed in the City. See M. B. Rose, 'Diversification of Investment by the Greg Family, i800-I914', Bus. Hist. XXI(I979), p. 89. 90 On the City's role here see Ingham, CapitalismDivided, chs. 5 and 6.

5i8

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local circumstances, were represented abroad by planters in the West Indies and by gentry in the mainland colonies, the two most important growth areas for British trade and influence in the eighteenth century.91 Even in regions where white settlement was unimportant, such as India, the extension of imperial government was accompanied by systematic attempts to establish property rights in land, and the new rulers looked to indigenous land-holders to provide steady support for civil order.92 And, in settled and non-settled parts of the empire alike, the patronage system ensured that the younger sons of magnates and gentry transmitted the values associated with privileged land ownership, and endowed authority with a military bearing and a paternal style which survived long after i850. 93 International commerce connected the British diaspora abroad and supported the landed interest at home. Some landowners were directly involved in overseas trade as exporters of grain (down to the I760s) or as producers of wool for the cloth industry; and the majority, as consumers of luxuries, had a stake in the fortunes of the import trades from Asia and the New World. Far more important, however, was the indirect link which joined overseas trade to national defence and domestic political stability. Governments of all persuasions had a permanent interest in promoting overseas trade because the state depended heavily on revenue from customs and excise duties to service the national debt and to finance patronage.94The alternative was to raise the land tax, but this would have alienated the gentry and endangered the Revolution settlement by weakening the solidarity of the landed interest. Consequently, a high tariff regime was installed at the close of the seventeenth century and it survived, with the support of the Navigation Acts, until the advent of free trade and its corollary, income tax, in the mid-nineteenth century. 95 The claims of particular interest groups had to be tailored to these defence and revenue priorities. The monied interest's heavy involvement in public finance was secured by a tariff policy which was geared to servicing the national debt. Similarly, the City's overseas commitments, which also expanded in the course of the eighteenth century, found expression largely within the imperial and protectionist system, at least down to the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Imperial control encouraged investment in plantations in the Caribbean and
91 R. Pares, A West India Fortune (I950); Merchants and Planters (Cambridge, ig60). There was a considerable rate of absenteeism among planters in the West Indies, whose ties with the metropole were strengthened by frequent visits to London. The "irresistible lure" of London also shaped and sustained gentlemanly culure in the mainland colonies. See J. A. Henretta, 'American High-Style and Vernacular Cultures', in J. P. Greene and J. R. Pole, eds. Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of the Early Modern Era (Baltimore, i984), p. 367. 92 For two contrasting case studies see R. and R. Roy, 'Zaminders and Jotedars: A Study of Rural Politics in Bengal', ModernAsian Studies, 9 (i975), pp. 8 i-io2, and Neil Rabitoy, 'System v. Expediency: The Reality of Land Revenue Administration in the Bombay Presidency, i8I2-i820', ibid. pp. 529-46. The classic study of how liberal England extended paternalism abroad is E. Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford, I959). 93 S. S. Webb, The Governors-General: The English Armyand the Definitionof Empire, I569-i68i (Chapel Hill, I979); P. J. Marshall, East India Fortunes:The British in Bengal in the EighteenthCentury(I976), pp. 9-14; Stokes, The English Utilitarians. 94 Mathias, First Industrial Nation, Table I2, p. 428, and The Transformation England (1979), pp. of I I 6-30. 9s R. Davis, 'The Rise of Protection in England, i669-1786', Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. XIX (i966), pp. 306-17.

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estates in the mainland colonies; the East India Company, with its quasiofficial status, acted as a channel for commercial investments in Asia. The Navigation Acts boosted shipping and commercial services, particularly in the import and re-export trades, which were handled mainly by London merchants and their associates in the City.96 Falling distribution and production costs, combined with rising demand (derived ultimately from increased agricultural productivity in the metropole) raised import-purchasing power for commodities such as sugar and tea, despite high tariffs.97 Re-exports, which were worth about one-third of all exports in the eighteenth century, offered an additional source of profit and, with invisible earnings, made a growing contribution to the balance of payments as the century advanced.98 The expanding scale and global reach of international trade encouraged trends towards concentration, and an oligopoly emerged in commerce which matched the oligarchy based on land.99However, this trend did not impair the efficiency of the transactions sector, which underlay the accumulation of Britain's worldwide interests, and it had the political advantage of mobilizing support effectively, especially through the East India Company and the West India lobby. 100It left room, too, for smaller private traders who had a part to play in advancing the frontiers of commerce beyond bases within the empire or under Britain's control.101 Manufacturersand export merchants expressed an even greatercommitment to protectionist policies.102 The leading eighteenth-century export, woollen
96 C. J. French, 'The Trade and Shipping of the Port of London, I700-I776' (unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of Exeter, ig80), pp. 45, 66-7, 89, I22; Davis, The Rise of the English Shipping Industry,p. 35. Glasgow made inroads into the tobacco trade in the second half of the eighteenth century, but in general it is mistaken to see the 'rise of the outports' as a gain made at London's expense because from the middle of the century merchants in the capital began to act as commission agents, bankers, and insurers for provincial ports. See French, 'Trade and Shipping', p. 45. The case for stressing import-led growth is made by R. Davis, 'English Foreign Trade, I700-I774', in W. E. Minchinton, ed. The Growthof English OverseasTrade in the Seventeenthand EighteenthCenturies(i969), p. io8 and F. J. Fisher, 'London as an Engine of Growth', in J. S. Bromley and E. H. Kossmann, eds. Britain and the Netherlands,vi (I97I), pp. 3-i6. On the shift to an 'export economy' at the close of the eighteenth century see F. Crouzet, 'Towards an Export Economy: British Exports during the Industrial Revolution', Exp. Econ. Hist. I7 (ig80), pp. 78-8i. Some problems of proof are raised by T. J. Hatton and J. S. Lyons, 'Eighteenth-Century British Trade: Homespun or Empire Made?', Exp. Econ. Hist. 20 (i983), pp. i63-82. 97 M. Egnal, 'The Economic Development of the Thirteen Continental Colonies, I720-I775', William and Mary Quarterly,32 (I975), pp. I9I-222; B. Thomas, 'The Rhythm of Growth in the Atlantic Economy of the Eighteenth Century', Research in Economic History, 3 (I978), pp. I-46; W. A. Cole, 'Factors in Demand, I700-80', in Floud and McCloskey, EconomicHistory of Britain, I, pp. 36-65. 98 Davis, 'English Foreign Trade', pp. io8, III; and idem, The IndustrialRevolutionand British Overseas Trade (Leicester, I979), p. 3I. 99 Rogers, 'Money, Land and Lineage', pp. 438-40, 442-4; P. G. E. Clemens, 'The Rise of Liverpool, i665-I750', Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. XXIX (I976), pp. 2i6-7; T. M. Devine, The TobaccoLords:A Study of the TobaccoMerchantsof Glasgow and their TradingActivities, c. I740-90 (Edinburgh, I975), p. 4; J. M. Price, 'The Transatlantic Economy', in Greene and Pole, Colonial British America, pp. 38-9. 100The chartered companies, once seen as commercial dinosaurs lingering beyond their time in the eighteenth century, have been given a progressive image in recent years. See L. Blusse and F. Gastra, eds. and Trade:Essays in OverseasTradingCompaniesDuring the Ancien Regime (The Hague, i98i); Companies K. N. Chaudhuri, The TradingWorldof Asia and the English East India Company,i66o-I760 (Cambridge, I978); Hoh-cheung Mui and Lorna H. Mui, The Managementof Monopoly:A Study of the English East India Company'sConductof its Tea Trade, I784-I833 (Vancouver, i984); G. Williams, 'The Hudson's Bay Company and its Critics in the Eighteenth Century', Trans. Ray. Hist. Soc. 20 (I970), pp. I49-7I. 101Particularly, so it has been argued, in the case of India. See E. Stokes, 'The First Century of British Rule in India', P. & P. 58 (I973), pp. I36-60. 102 Contemporaryviews are discussed by M. Kammen, Empire and Interest:The AmericanColoniesand the Politics of Mercantilism (Philadelphia, I970), and J. Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England (Princeton, I978). It will be evident that we do not share Kammen's view

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cloth, faced difficulties in major markets in Europe and came to depend increasingly on consumers in the New World, where the task of selling manufactures was both eased by the absence of competing industries and supported by legislation in the colonies.103In Asia, by contrast, the presence of a vigorous textile industry and the lack of colonial control prevented manufactured exports from making significant headway.104The rise of exports of cotton goods from the I780s gave Britain a sizeable, though temporary, competitive advantage in major markets in Europe and the United States, but it did not cause manufacturers to embrace free trade.105Manufacturers were not gentlemen and in general they operated small scale units which were distanced-to an increasing extent-from London. They neither spoke with one voice nor had the ear of governments. But their concerns were looked after, within the framework of defence and revenue priorities, not least because the landed interest had learned to keep a sharp eye on the effect which mass unemployment in the textile industries could have on public order and the poor rate.106 These domestic impulses gave international policy a strongly imperialist bias from the late seventeenth century onwards. The revolution settlement at home was complemented abroad by measures which brought the colonies under tighter parliamentary control and consolidated the power of the East India Company.107 Whether or not a period of "salutary neglect" followed this burst of activity is a matter of debate among political historians; but the administrative vacillations which undoubtedly occurred ought not to obscure the impressive growth of international and imperial connexions during a period which saw Europe's share of Britain's overseas trade drop steadily from 74 per cent in I7I3-I7 to 33 per cent in I803-7.108 The newly imported monarchy obliged Britain to step up her continental commitments for a time, but entry into Europe was as half-hearted in the eighteenth century as it was to be at a much later date. Fiscal need and comparative advantage pointed towards a blue water strategy which enlisted the empire to bolster the metropole against more powerful neighbours and limited Britain's diplomatic involvement in Europe to the "great game" of forestalling the emergence of a single dominant state.109
that rapid economic change began in the middle of the eighteenth century or Appleby's argument that import merchants, who undoubtedly favoured lower tariffs, were precursors of laissez-faire in the nineteenth-century sense of the term. 103 Davis, 'English Foreign Trade', pp. I05-6. 104 Chaudhuri, Trading World, chs. i0-ii. 105 Jeremy, 'Damming the Flood'; Farnie, English Cotton Industry, p. 97. 106 Stevenson, Popular Disturbances, pp. 70-2, ii8-9; Appleby, Economic Thought, pp. I27-8, II3-6, i66-7. The Tory revival in the second half of the eighteenth century was based partly on a strategy for capturing urban discontent in the provinces. 107 See, for example, I. K. Steele, The Politics of Colonial Policy: The Board of Trade in Colonial Administration, i696-I720 (Oxford, i968); Horwitz, 'The East India Trade, the Politicians, and the Constitution, i689-I702', J. Brit. Stud. I7 (I978), pp. i-i8; John M. Murrin, 'Political Development', in Greene and Pole, eds. Colonial British America, p. 432. 108 The argument in J. A. Henretta's 'Salutary Neglect': Colonial Administrationunder the Duke of Newcastle (Princeton, I972), despite its many merits, is indicative of the separation which exists between political and economic historians for this period as for others covered by the present article. See also Murrin, 'Political Development', p. 432. Trade data are derived from S. Drescher, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (Pittsburg, I977), p. 20. 109R. Pares, 'American versus Continental Warfare, I739-63', in Pares, The Historian'sBusiness, pp. I30-72, and, for an overview of foreign policy, P. Langford, The EighteenthCentury(I976).

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Just as Britain's involvement with the wider world was promoted by the forces which made the Glorious Revolution, so the advance and retreat of empire in the eighteenth century can be traced ultimately to the difficulty of exporting the revolution settlement, and in particular to the problem of reconciling expanding financial and commercial interests with centralizing political tendencies.110 The "balanced constitution" achieved at home by incorporating the most pressing claimants into the gentlemanly hierachy and by offering concessions to special interest groups was not easily reproduced on distant peripheries. Attempts to assert formal claims, by the crown in the colonies and by the Company in India, were increasingly hampered by disputes over jurisdiction and sovereignty. The search for compliant associates created a gentry in the New World and promoted merchant princes in Asia, but did not guarantee their co-operation. This was partly because there were financial limits to the extension of the patronage system abroad, but also because not everyone could be bought. Successful participationin foreign trade encouraged local elites, gentry and nawabs alike, to advance claims of their own and to dispute the terms of incorporation by invoking precedents which challenged the principles of the Glorious Revolution.111 Problems of control over the periphery became more acute from the middle of the century. Rising defence costs intensified the search for revenue, and success against France in I763 appeared to increase the prospects for raising taxes from the colonies and for gathering tribute from India.112 American colonists, recalcitrant rulers, and private traders were seen from London as free-riders who benefited from the global network of commerce without contributing their share of the running costs. Metropolitan problems impelled solutions abroad which imposed upon already uncertain relationships with
110 The suggestion that these tendencies affected both India and the mainland colonies, albeit in different ways, arises from a comparison of the discrete literature on these regions. The voluminous evidence now available on the American colonies before the War of Independence is surveyed in P. Marshall and G. Williams, eds. The British Atlantic Empire before the American Revolution (i980), and Greene and Pole, eds. Colonial British America. The literature on India is more scattered but see in particular, Chaudhuri, Trading World of Asia; J. D. Nichol, 'The British in India, I740-I763: A Study in Imperial Expansion into Bengal (unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of Cambridge, I976); I. B. Watson, Foundation for Empire: English Private Trade in India, i659-I760 (New Delhi, i980). 111Settlers in America made use of 'country' ideology to justify the rights of the provinces against the centre; rulers in India appealed to separatist traditions which legitimated their autonomy from both Delhi and London. 112 J. P. Greene, 'The Seven Years' War and the American Revolution: The Causal Relationship Reconsidered', in Marshall and Williams, eds. The British Atlantic Empire, pp. 85-I05; A. G. Olsen, 'The Board of Trade and London-American Interest Groups in the Eighteenth Century', ibid. pp. 33-50; Pocock, ThreeBritish Revolutions. On India see P. J. Marshall, 'British Expansion in India in the Eighteenth Century: A Historical Revision', History, LX (I975), pp. 28-43; East India Fortunes (Oxford I976); 'Economic and Political Expansion: The Case of Oudh', Mod. Asian Stud., 9 (I975), pp. 465-82. British claims ran into competing forms of 'military fiscalism' in Bengal, Oudh and, as Burton Stein has shown, in south India too: 'State Formation and Economy Reconsidered', Mod. Asian Stud. i9 (i985), pp. 3874I3. See also R. B. Barnett, North India Between Empires:Awadh, the Mughals and the British, I720-i80i (Berkeley, i980). Rudrangshu Mukherjee, 'Trade and Empire in Awadh, I765-i804', P. & P. 94 (i982), pp. 85-102, stresses the importance of local revenues in British calculations but derives these economic impulses from the industrial revolution. This connexion is unnecessary and inaccurate, as we have tried to argue. Wellesley was a gentleman creating a patrimony. He needed no instruction about the importance of state revenues to political authority, and he kept an eye on commercial interests without being beholden to them. His priorities were representative of those of the landed magnates who dominated British policymaking during this period. Cannot the debate between Marshall and Mukherjee be resolved in this way? (See 'Early British Imperialism in India', P. & P. io6 (i985), pp. i64-73).

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both America and India. The alternativewas to risk provoking more discontent at home by raising taxation and pushing disaffected gentry and provincial urban interests into an alliance against the affluence and privilege of southeastern England. There was even a prospect, no less fearsome for being distant, that domestic opposition might join forces with radical elements in the colonies. The claims of the colonists had to be resisted, even at'the price of defeat, because to accept them was to invite still greater changes at home. The Revolution of i688 was to be defended by tightening the grip on the empire where possible, not by abandoning it. As the American colonists moved towards independence, less powerful resisters in the Indian subcontinent were brought more firmly under formal rule. Overseas policy also conformed to established priorities even after the loss of the American colonies. The immediate reaction to the American Revolution was not to abandon the "old colonial system" but to repair it by means of the Navigation Act of I786. The French Wars-the culmination of a centurylong struggle for global supremacy113-emphasized the continuing importance of colonial supplies to national security. Extensions of authority in Canada, Australia, the Cape, the West Indies, and India reinforced the empire and strengthened defence against foreign aggressors.114 Shifts in the direction of exports to Europe and North America after I780 undoubtedly helped to bring about some liberalization of trade with the United States; and the East India Company's monopoly of Indian trade was weakened in I793 and abolished in I8I3. However, the first measure was a grudging modification to a system which remained resolutely protectionist,115and the second, though it represented a growing consensus on the part of private traders, provincial manufacturers and successive governments about the need for freer access to the East, was not designed to allow foreigners entry to regions opened by British enterprise.116Policy-makers were as much agreed on the need to maintain protected colonial outlets for goods and services as they were on the importance of liberalizing the domestic market. The vigorous protectionist policies adopted in Europe and the United States after I8I5 served to confirm traditional policy. They also prompted an interest in extending trade to underdeveloped areas outside Britain's formal control. The extension of "informal" empire after I815 is best understood not as an alternative to the old colonial system but as an addition to it which reflected the increasingly cosmopolitan character of Britain's trade and finance. This means of expansion was made possible by the elimination of the French naval threat, which greatly reduced the need for direct British political influence abroad and made the pursuit of new markets compatible with the drive for cheap government.117 Castlereagh and Canning believed that "free trade
A. D. Harvey, Britain in the Early Nineteenth Century(1978), pp. 302-4. D. L. Mackay, 'Direction and Purpose in British Imperial Policy, I793-i80i', Hist. J. XVII (I974), PP. 487-501. 115 The struggle to incorporate United States trade into the system has been studied by Mackay, 'Direction and Purpose'; G. S. Graham, Sea Power and British North America, I783-i820 (Harvard, I94I); and S. G. Checkland, 'American versus West Indian Traders in Liverpool, I793-i8I5', J. Econ. Hist. xvii (I958), pp. I41-60. (i968), pp. 95-IOI; A. Tripathi, Trade 116 P. Marshall, Problemsof Empire:Britain and India, I757-i8I3 and Finance in the Bengal Presidency, I793-i833 (2nd ed. Calcutta, I979). on the Expansion of Britain 117 On the naval ramifications see G. S. Graham, Tides of Empire:Discursions Overseas (I972), pp. 8off.
113 114

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imperialism" would arise naturally out of the steady liberalizationof trade with new partners, especially in Latin America.118By the i830s, their successor as Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, was more aware of the presence of European and American competition and of the urgent need for new markets for industry and commerce in the underdeveloped world. Palmerston's almost instinctive commitment to free-market economics ought not to be surprising, given that he inherited the beliefs advanced by the gentlemanly elite at the beginning of the century. But the effort he put into extending Britain's trade and influence in the extra-European world needs to be emphasized because it is still underplayed by diplomatic historians. Palmerston was determined to "export abroad the same self-regulating system which was transformingBritish society"..119To this end, he was willing to impose free trade on reluctant rulers, to evict recalcitrant ones, and to advance "legitimate commerce" by putting down the African slave trade.120 Behind this design for world development, which aimed at creating a cluster of satellite economies managed by foreign beneficiaries of English culture,12. stood Palmerston's persistent concern about the possibility of social breakdown in the i83os and i840s, when. industry was severely depressed and Chartism was at its height. It is no coincidence that Palmerston's interventionist policy reached new levels of intensity during this period. The war against China, the Turkish and Egyptian treaties of i838 and i84I, the attack on Rosas and on Argentine protectionism122all reflected his concern to find overseas solutions to domestic problems, and his particular belief that "it is the business of government to open and secure the roads for the merchant".123 Palmerston's policies carried into the mid-nineteenth century the peculiarly British mixture of economic liberty and gentlemanly paternalism which had its origins in the late seventeenth century. He also infused these ideas with a renewed sense of mission: the belief that the British model of development could be exported overseas, and the conviction that it had to be exported if it were to be preserved at home. Unfortunately for Britain, this strategy ran into serious difficulties. Penetration of underdeveloped countries was confined largely to coastal regionsuntil railways advanced the frontiers of trade inland during the second
118 C. J. Bartlett, Castlereagh (i966), pp. 235ff; P. J. V. Rolo, George Canning, Three Biographical Studies(i965), esp. pp. 254-8. 119See the neglected thesis by R. J. Gavin, 'Palmerston's Policy Towards East and West Africa, i830I865' (unpub. Ph.D thesis, Cambridge Univ. I958), pp. i6-46 and esp. p. i8; A. G. Hopkin, 'Property Rights and Empire Building: Britain's Annexation of Lagos, i86i', J. Econ. Hist. 40 (ig80), pp. 777-98. 120 R. J. Gavin, 'Palmerston and Africa', Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, vi (I97I), p. 94. Palmerstonwas particularly upset by French expansion in North Africa. 121 This is the theme of Sir T. F. Buxton's, The African Slave Trade and its Remedy (i840). The best study of this subject remains J. Gallagher, 'Fowell Buxton and the "New African Policy", i838-i842', Historical Journal, IO (1950), pp. 36-58. Cambridge 122 There was a strong link between export difficulties, social unrest and unemployment and the aggressivestance taken towards the Argentine government during the Uruguayan dispute in i84I-5. See H. S. Ferns, Britain and Argentina in the Nineteenth Century(Oxford, ig60), ch. ix; P. Winn, 'British InformalEmpire in Uruguay in the Nineteenth Century', P. & P. 73 (1976), pp. I04-8; V. G. Kiernan, 'Britain'sFirst Contacts with Paraguay', Atlante, III (I955), pp. I7I-9I. On British free trade imperialism in the Far East, see J. Y. Wong, 'The Building of an Imperial British Empire in China in the Middle of the Nineteenth Century', Bulletin of theJohn Rylands Libraryof Manchester,59 (1976), pp. 480-4; and 0. M. Kenzo, 'The British Cotton Industry and Asia: Some Aspects of the Imperialism of Free Trade in the Nineteenth Century', Annals of the Institute of Social Science (Tokyo), 24 (i982-3), pp. 74-Io3. 123 C. K. Webster, The Foreign Policy of Palmerston, II (I95I), pp. 750-I.

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half of the nineteenth century.124 The abortive attempt to integrate Latin American republics more firmly into the international economy after I820 by supplying them with capital was indicative of the problems Britain faced, though the episode foreshadowed the alliance between City financiers and provincial manufacturers which was to become important after i850.125 The failure to extend British economic influence by this means increased the pressure to adopt complete free trade in the i840s, and brought nearer the demise of the particular form of gentlemanly capitalism which Palmerston so aptly represented. Until the i840s, though, colonial preferences remained a central feature of Britain's international economic policy. Control of India helped to make the sub-continent the most successful example of the new development policy from the i83os onwards and provided compensation for the decline of the West Indies.126 The white colonies offered openings for migrants as well as for capital and commerce, and their place in Britain's global design was fully appreciated in political circles127even though the pace of their development in the pre-railway era was slow. Indeed, in the troubled i83os and i840s considerable interest was shown in the possibility of taking government action to promote factor flows to the colonies, and especially to widen the "field of employment" for the middle class as the state apparatuscontracted at home. 128 The granting of political liberty to white colonies after the I840s should not be seen either as a direct consequence of the decline of landed power or as an inevitable result of the demise of the old colonial system. It was the growth of parliamentarygovernment in Britain after I832,129 and the increasing recognition that the colonies could function as economic satellites without direct control, which led to local political autonomy.130Responsible government was also linked to the new fiscal orthodoxy: a willingness to assume defence burdens and to relieve the Treasury of unwelcome obligations was often taken to be primafacie evidence of a state of maturity which deserved to be rewarded by political liberty.131 The economic and political evolution
124 In 'The Imperialism of Free Trade, i8i5-I914', Gallagher and Robinson argue for an effective informal economic empire after i8i5. But Platt has demonstrated that, whatever the intentions,geography and technique restricted the British advance before the latter part of the century. See especially D. C. M. Platt, 'The Imperialism of Free Trade: Some Reservations', Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. xxi (i968), pp. 296306, and 'Further Objections to an "Imperialism of Free Trade"', ibid. 2nd ser. XXVI (I973), pp. 77-9I. 125 V. B. Reber, British MercantileHouses in Buenos Aires, i8io-I88o (Harvard, I979). 126 On the chronology of economic decline in the West Indies see Drescher, Econocide, and J. R. Ward, 'The Profitability of Sugar Planting in the British West Indies', Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. XXXI (I978), pp.

I97-2I3.

A. G. Shaw, 'British Attitudes to the Colonies, c. I820-I850', J. Brit. Stud. ix (i969), pp. 7I-95. The best introduction to this episode is still B. Semmel, 'The Philosophic Radicals and Colonialism', J. Econ. Hist. XXI (i96i), pp. 5I3-25. 129 The principle that governments were dependent upon parliamentary majorities rather than on the Queen's approval was not established until the I840s. Only then was it possible to extend parliamentary government to the empire and to reduce the role of the governor as the sovereign's representative. See J. M. Ward, Colonial Self Government:The British Experience, i759-i856 (I976), esp. pp. 43, 55. 130 P. Burroughs, 'The Determinants of Local Self-Government',Journal of Imperialand Commonwealth History, VI (I978), pp. 32I-2. 131 A major theme of S. R. Stembridge, Parliament, The Press and The Colonies, i846-1880 (i982). Continued colonial economic dependence was taken for granted even by radicals who urged complete political separation. See G. Martin, 'Anti-Imperialism in the Mid-Nineteenth Century and the Nature of the British Empire', in R. Hyam and G. Martin, eds. Reappraisalsin British Imperial History (I975), pp.
127 128

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of the colonies thus reflected the changing structure of Britain, as the gentlemanly elite sought to adjust to changes forced upon it by the erosion of its eighteenth-century foundations. IV The main purpose of this article has been to establish a connexion between gentlemanly capitalism based on landed wealth and overseas expansion, particularly in its imperialist forms, between i688 and i850. After i850, free trade destroyed the old colonial system and, in combination with the rise of new wealth, ensured the gradual demise of the landed aristocracy, thus bringing one phase in the history of gentlemanly capitalism to an end. But the new economic and political structures which arose-and the imperialism which flowed from them-were not dominated by industrial capitalism. From the middle of the nineteenth century the major area of growth was the service sector, and the most rapidly developing region was the south-east. The City was at the heart of both. London stood at the centre of a well-developed network of international services, and these were destined to expand rapidly as world trade increased in the second half of the nineteenth century. Even before i850, financial flows from the City were a major determinant of the rhythm of development in the colonies.132 Beyond formal empire, London's influence as the main source of long-term international finance had begun to spread to Europe and north America after i8I5 and was poised to increase dramaticallyafter i850, as the age of the steamship and railway began.133The service sector and the City supported the introduction of free trade and proved, during the next seventy years, to be its chief beneficiaries. They also carried into free-trade Britain many of the cultural values acquired in the course of their long apprenticeship to the landed aristocracy. After i850, as one form of gentlemanly capitalism began to fail, another arose to take its place. Universityof Birmingham
132 See especially here H. J. Habakkuk, 'Free Trade and Commercial Expansion, i853-70', Cambridge Historyof theBritish Empire, I I (I940), pp. 798-9. For examples of networks of trade and factor movement connecting the City with colonies, see F. J. A. Broeze, 'Private Enterprise and the Peopling of Australia, i83i-50', Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. xxxv (i982), pp. 235-5I; and W. E. Cheong, Mandarinsand Merchants. Jardine Matheson and Co., a China Agency of the Early Nineteenth Century(Malmo and London, I978), chs. 6 & 7. 133 For some insights into the growth of British overseas credit operations and investments see D. C. M. Platt, Foreign Finance in ContinentalEurope and the U.S.A., i8IS-70: Quantities, Origins, Functions and Distributions(i984). Platt has argued here and in 'British Portfolio Investment Before i870: Some Doubts', Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. XXXIII(i980), pp. i-i6, that the amount of British investment has been overestimated. But see the review of 'Foreign Finance' by M. Edelstein in Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. xxxviII (i985), pp. 485-6.