In the aftermath of the French Revolution, advocates of protection against foreign competition prevailed in a fierce controversy over international trade. This groundbreaking study is the first to examine this 'protectionist turn' in full. Faced with a reaffirmation of mercantile jealousy under the Bourbon Restoration, Benjamin Constant, Jean-Baptiste Say and regional publicists advocated the adoption of the liberty of commerce in order to consolidate the new liberal order. But after the Revolution of 1830 a new generation of liberal thinkers endeavoured to reconcile the jealousy of trade with the discourse of commercial society and political liberty. New justifications for protection oscillated between an industrialist reinvention of jealousy and an aspiration to self-sufficiency as a means of attenuating the rise of urban pauperism. A strident denunciation of British power and social imbalances served to defuse the internal tensions of the protectionist discourse and facilitated its dissemination across the French political spectrum.

A ground-breaking account of British and French efforts to channel their eighteenth-century geopolitical rivalry into peaceful commercial competition Britain and France waged war eight times in the century following the Glorious Revolution, a mutual antagonism long regarded as a "Second Hundred Years' War." Yet officials on both sides also initiated ententes, free trade schemes, and colonial bargains intended to avert future conflict. What drove this quest for a more peaceful order? In this highly original account, John Shovlin reveals the extent to which Britain and France sought to divert their rivalry away from war and into commercial competition. The two powers worked to end future conflict over trade in Spanish America, the Caribbean, and India, and imagined forms of empire-building that would be more collaborative than competitive. They negotiated to cut cross-channel tariffs, recognizing that free trade could foster national power while muting enmity. This account shows that eighteenth-century capitalism drove not only repeated wars and overseas imperialism but spurred political leaders to strive for global stability.

Analyses economic nationalism as a set of ideas and policies that have shaped the modern world economy over the past 250 years.

The first comprehensive account of revolutionary and socialist thought after the 1871 Paris Commune, France's last nineteenth-century revolution.

Jonathan Sperber’s Revolutionary Europe 1780–1850 is a history of Europe in the age of the French Revolution, from the end of the old regime to the outcome of the revolutions of 1848. Fully revised and updated, this second edition provides a continent-wide history of the key political events and social transformation that took place within this turbulent period, extending as far as their effects within the European colonial society of the Caribbean. Key features include analyses of the movement from society’s old regime of orders to a civil society of property owners; the varied consequences of rapid population increase and the spread of market relations in the economy; and the upshot of these changes for political life, from violent revolutions and warfare to dramatic reforms and peaceful mass movements a lively account of the events of the period and a thorough analysis of the political, cultural and socioeconomic transformations that shaped them a look into the lives of ordinary people amidst the social and economic developments of the time a range of maps depicting the developments in Europe’s geographic scope between 1789 and 1848, including for the 1820, 1830 and 1848 revolutions. Revolutionary Europe 1780–1850 is the perfect introduction for students of the history of the French Revolution and the history of Europe more broadly.

How France's elites used soft power to pursue their imperial ambitions in the nineteenth century After Napoleon's downfall in 1815, France embraced a mostly informal style of empire, one that emphasized economic and cultural influence rather than military conquest. A Velvet Empire is a global history of French imperialism in the nineteenth century, providing new insights into the mechanisms of imperial collaboration that extended France's power from the Middle East to Latin America and ushered in the modern age of globalization. David Todd shows how French elites pursued a cunning strategy of imperial expansion in which conspicuous commodities such as champagne and silk textiles, together with loans to client states, contributed to a global campaign of seduction. French imperialism was no less brutal than that of the British. But while Britain widened its imperial reach through settler colonialism and the acquisition of far-flung territories, France built a "velvet" empire backed by frequent military interventions and a broadening extraterritorial jurisdiction. Todd demonstrates how France drew vast benefits from these asymmetric, imperial-like relations until a succession of setbacks around the world brought about their unravelling in the 1870s. A Velvet Empire sheds light on France's neglected contribution to the conservative reinvention of modernity and offers a new interpretation of the resurgence of French colonialism on a global scale after 1880. This panoramic book also highlights the crucial role of collaboration among European empires during this period—including archrivals Britain and France—and cooperation with indigenous elites in facilitating imperial expansion and the globalization of capitalism.

This book uncovers the ambivalence towards commerce in eighteenth-century France, questioning the assumption that commerce was widely celebrated in the era of Adam Smith.