The repeal of Britain's Corn Laws in 1846--one of the most important                  economic policy decisions of the nineteenth century--has long intrigued and puzzled                  political scientists, historians, and economists. Why would a Conservative prime                  minister act against his own party's interests? The Conservatives entered government                  in 1841 with a strong commitment to protecting agriculture; five years later, the                  Conservative Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel presided over repeal of the                  protectionist Corn Laws, violating party principles and undercutting the economic                  interests of the land-owning aristocracy. Only a third of Conservative members of                  Parliament supported the repeal legislation and within a month of repeal, Peel's                  government fell. The Conservatives remained out of power for decades. In this                  definitive book, Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey examines the interacting forces that                  brought about the abrupt beginning of Britain's free-trade empire.Using a wide                  variety of methodological tools to measure both qualitative and quantitative data                  (including computer-assisted content analysis of thousands of pages of parliamentary                  debates), Schonhardt-Bailey concludes that economic interests provided the momentum                  behind repeal, a momentum that overshadowed almost all else. Indeed, as part of a                  broader momentum of democratic reform, these same interests, left unsatisfied, may                  easily have snowballed into revolution--as Sir Robert Peel and others feared. But                  interests alone did not explain why reform rather than revolution emerged in                  mid-nineteenth century Britain. In order to resolve more fully the long-standing                  puzzle of repeal, Schonhardt-Bailey traces the overlapping and intertwined forces of                  interest, ideas, and institutions.

From the Corn Laws to Free Trade: Interests, Ideas, and Institutions in Historical Perspective PDF

The list of books you might like