Why was Britain the first country to opt for unilateral free trade 150 years ago? On 16 May 1846, the House of Commons voted to abolish tariff protection for agriculture - the famous 'repeal of the Corn Laws'. Britain then adhered to her free trade policy despite both her relative economic decline and the protectionist policies of her leading trade rivals, the USA and Germany.This four volume set examines and explains the contentious issues surrounding the policy shift to free trade and the subsequent persistence of that policy. This set provides a comprehensive collection of articles including previously unpublished material on nineteenth century British trade policy and a new and comprehensive introduction by the editor putting the material into context.

The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism seeks to uncover some of the intellectual origins of the imperialism of the classic period, the sources from which later theories of imperialism were constructed, and the character of the ideology which underlay the dismantling of the old colonial system and the construction of the Victorian Pax Britannica. The author discusses the development and diffusion of a number of the central arguments of the 'science' of political economy, from the standpoint of a historian rather than an economist, which were crucial not only to the construction of theories of capitalist imperialism, but also served as a spur both to efforts at colonization, and to establishing a British Workshop of the World.

This volume is a comprehensive collection of critical essays on The Taming of the Shrew, and includes extensive discussions of the play's various printed versions and its theatrical productions. Aspinall has included only those essays that offer the most influential and controversial arguments surrounding the play. The issues discussed include gender, authority, female autonomy and unruliness, courtship and marriage, language and speech, and performance and theatricality.

Here is an introduction to the study of the international economy as a mechanism for diffusing modern economic growth between nations. It is divided into three parts, of which the first examines the workings of the system in the years before 1914. This includes an analysis of the conditions favorable to the growth of international economic relations during the period, examines the changing character of the international flows of labor, capital and trade, and surveys contemporary commercial and international monetary policies. This first part concludes with a chapter analyzing the international economy as a mechanism for diffusing economic growth, and another chapter examining the nature of the economic trends and fluctuations associated with this phase in the growth of the international economic system. The second part gives an account of the collapse of the international economy during the interwar years, and traces the causes of collapse to changes in the structure and functioning of the system brought about by World War I and the depression of the 1930s. The final part takes the story beyond World War II. It describes the wartime and post-war efforts to reconstruct the international economic system, and examines the working of the new system in the period after 1945, bringing out both its strengths and its weaknesses.