British Commercial Policy towards the Zollverein, 1860–6: The Anglo-French and Anglo-Zollverein Treaties of Commerce

Abstract

The other main symptom of a decline in the dominance of pure free trade in British politics was represented by the series of commercial treaties with foreign countries, inaugurated by that with France in 1860. The very idea of negotiating reciprocal commercial treaties had until that point been at odds with free trade dogma, and the project, drawn up by Cobden and Chevalier,¹ initially faced no little opposition.² As John Stuart Mill observed, those who insisted ‘on treating their science as if it were a thing not to guide our judgement, but to stand in its place, denounced the doctrine of treaties as a new-fangled heresy’.³ For Cobden, as well as for the British government, the Anglo-French Treaty represented a climb-down of sorts from blind faith in the prognostications of free trade theory. At the time of the abolition of the Corn Laws, Cobden had promised voters that ‘there will not be a tariff in Europe that will not be changed in less than 5 years to follow your example’.⁴ Such, however, was blatantly not the case.