WI: The UK remains protectionist after the Repeal of Corn Law

Thomas1195

Banned
What would happen to the UK and the world if the UK remain protectionist even after the Repeal of Corn Law? I mean, it continues to impose high tariffs on foreign manufactured goods. In other words, no transition further towards free trade, just stop at the Repeal.

I remember that before the Repeal of Corn Law, Britain even banned the export of machinery and the migration of technicians. What if it continued to do so?
 
Wasn't the Corn Law specifically about grain though? A way to keep cheap American, Canadian (maybe an anachronist term for the period), and Polish grain off the market outside of famine situations. Not that the famine itself would mean the market would open, but that the price of grain had to rise high enough that the land-owning gentry could take in loads of cash. And keep in mind that most countries had some sort of protectionist measures in place. Taxes, tariffs, fees to government officials, payments disguises as tribute... You will need to use dates referring to which acts and events you are specificially thinking about. And not strange that machinery would be a banned export good. Patents, trademarks, intellectual properties, and copyrights of any sort were barely ever enforced within a country, let alone by their competitiors. For Versailles the French even stole the centuries guarded secret of glassmaking from the Venetians and set up their own factory.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
Wasn't the Corn Law specifically about grain though? A way to keep cheap American, Canadian (maybe an anachronist term for the period), and Polish grain off the market outside of famine situations. Not that the famine itself would mean the market would open, but that the price of grain had to rise high enough that the land-owning gentry could take in loads of cash. And keep in mind that most countries had some sort of protectionist measures in place. Taxes, tariffs, fees to government officials, payments disguises as tribute... You will need to use dates referring to which acts and events you are specificially thinking about. And not strange that machinery would be a banned export good. Patents, trademarks, intellectual properties, and copyrights of any sort were barely ever enforced within a country, let alone by their competitiors. For Versailles the French even stole the centuries guarded secret of glassmaking from the Venetians and set up their own factory.
https://books.google.com.vn/books?id=7jAB6GJCZS4C&pg=PA131&lpg=PA131&dq=uk+ban+machinery+export+19th+century&source=bl&ots=H6X4nPxnLR&sig=KPawe1AcZ4ds1hFe3T7ksAy4dVM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiYz7Ci0s_WAhNpQKHRVPA90Q6AEITjAG#v=onepage&q=uk ban machinery export 19th century&f=false
British ban on machinery export was dropped in 1842, while the ban on skilled worker emigration was repealed in 1825.

Britain moved progressively towards free trade after the Repeal of Corn Law. By 1880s, it became the only country in the world that had no tariff.
 
The ban on machinery export and skilled worker emigration were dropped because they were unenforceable - as @Clandango points out. There was simply no way this was possible in the period. You've already got people like Richard Trevithick and Robert Stephenson working abroad in mining and railway development before this period, shipping out equipment with them. The Government really has no way to stop it happening.

The hardest thing about enforcing a continued trade protection system in Britain is that, as the 19th century went on, Free Trade and Political Reform increasingly got tied up together. As Frank Trentman puts it in his book, by the 1860s at latest the British had started to conceive of themselves as a free trade nation and that free trade was intrinsic to their political DNA, just as protectionism was intrinsic to what the Victorians saw as European despotism. Its a very hard link to break, even before you tackle the immense commercial pressure on the government to liberalize trade in this period, and its something Joseph Chamberlain found out to his cost.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
Free Trade and Political Reform increasingly got tied up together
Americans proved that a liberal democracy can be heavily protectionist.

The argument for Free Trade at that time was mainly cheap food, but industrial stuff was another matter.
 
Americans proved that a liberal democracy can be heavily protectionist.

The argument for Free Trade at that time was mainly cheap food, but industrial stuff was another matter.

No, they didn't. Not to the Victorians. You're talking about hindsight, which is all well and good but isn't historical fact at the time. For liberal Britons in the c19th free trade and political liberties went hand in hand. They were, together, proof for the Victorians of the supremacy of their political, cultural, and economic way of life.

The argument about free trade meaning cheap food was a reductive one, the complexities of international trade boiled down to that one issue by the Liberals in their opposition to Tariff Reform movements in the early 1900s, who hoped a simple message would play best across a widened electorate. For those reformers in the mid c19th the supremacy of British industry, as exemplified at the Great Exhibition, meant that Britain didn't need protective walls. That free trade would only be to the benefit of the 'greatest commercial nation on earth' because, really, who could compete with them? By the time that US and German manufacturing began to challenge British ascendancy in the final decades of the century, this mindset was already deeply entrenched in British society and it was very hard for many to consider turning their backs on something that they saw as fundamentally linked to parliamentary democracy, the free press, the rule of law, etc etc.
 
What would happen to the UK and the world if the UK remain protectionist even after the Repeal of Corn Law? I mean, it continues to impose high tariffs on foreign manufactured goods. In other words, no transition further towards free trade, just stop at the Repeal.

I remember that before the Repeal of Corn Law, Britain even banned the export of machinery and the migration of technicians. What if it continued to do so?


Not at that point the country was heading towards the High point of Free Trade. Later in the 19th Century or earlier in the 20th one would need to get Chamberlain and the Conservative Protectionists to remove the Food Taxes from their programme. Without these Imperial protection could actually succeed and the Tariff Reformers come to office..
 
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