| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines the influence of Victorian free-trade ideology upon American foreign relations. Victorian free-trade ideology-also known as Cobdenism-gained ground among a small but powerful group of predominantly New England intellectuals. These American Cobdenites became members of the Cobden Club of England, a club that sought to spread free trade throughout the world and was thus seen as a threat to American protectionism. Many of these American Cobdenite members also exerted previously unrecognized influence at both the governmental and nongovernmental level upon Republican and Democratic politics. Cobdenism is nearly absent from American foreign relations historiography. Yet Anglophobic economic nationalists at the time viewed such influence as a transatlantic free-trade conspiracy. By investigating this controversy, I argue that Cobdenism greatly affected Gilded-Age foreign and domestic policies, particularly regarding American attempts at instituting freer trade, maintaining the gold standard, informal imperialism, and developing more amicable Anglo-American relations.
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