Exploring works by Walter Scott, Harriet Martineau, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, and their lesser-known contemporaries, Romances of Free Trade historicizes globalization as it traces the perception of dissolving borders and declining national sovereignty back into the nineteenth century. The book offers a new account of the cultural work of romance in nineteenth-century Britain. Çelikkol argues that novelists and playwrights employed this genre to represent a radically new historical formation: the emergence of a globalized free-market economy. In previous centuries, the British state had pursued an economic policy that chose domestic goods over foreign ones. Through the first half of the nineteenth century, liberal economists maintained that commodity traffic across national borders should move outside the purview of the state, a position and practice that began to take hold as the century progressed. Amid the transformation, Britons pondered the vertiginous effects of rapidly accelerating economic circulation. Would patriotic attachment to the homeland dissolve along with the preference for domestic goods? How would the nation and the empire fare if commerce became uncontrollable? The literary genre of romance, characterized by protagonists who drift in lawless spaces, played a meaningful role in addressing such pressing questions. From the figure of the smuggler to the episodic plot structure, romance elements in fiction and drama narrated and made tangible the sprawling global markets and fluid capital that were reshaping the world. In addition to clear-eyed close readings of nineteenth-century novels and plays, Çelikkol draws on the era's major economic theorists, figures like Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus, to vividly illustrate the manifold ways the romance genre engaged with these emerging financial changes.

In Trade and Romance, Michael Murrin examines the complex relations between the expansion of trade in Asia and the production of heroic romance in Europe from the second half of the thirteenth century through the late seventeenth century. He shows how these tales of romance, ostensibly meant for the aristocracy, were important to the growing mercantile class as a way to gauge their own experiences in traveling to and trading in these exotic locales. Murrin also looks at the role that growing knowledge of geography played in the writing of the creative literature of the period, tracking how accurate, or inaccurate, these writers were in depicting far-flung destinations, from Iran and the Caspian Sea all the way to the Pacific. With reference to an impressive range of major works in several languages—including the works of Marco Polo, Geoffrey Chaucer, Matteo Maria Boiardo, Luís de Camões, Fernão Mendes Pinto, Edmund Spenser, John Milton, and more—Murrin tracks numerous accounts by traders and merchants through the literature, first on the Silk Road, beginning in the mid-thirteenth century; then on the water route to India, Japan, and China via the Cape of Good Hope; and, finally, the overland route through Siberia to Beijing. All of these routes, originally used to exchange commodities, quickly became paths to knowledge as well, enabling information to pass, if sometimes vaguely and intermittently, between Europe and the Far East. These new tales of distant shores fired the imagination of Europe and made their way, with surprising accuracy, as Murrin shows, into the poetry of the period.

This brilliantly written history of the office of the U.S. Trade Representative illuminates the part this office plays in our evoloving role in the world economy. Dryden traces the deep ambivalence most Americans have about the ideal of free trade, and includes vivid capsule portraits of all the U.S. Trade Representatives.

Examining the influential accounts of Westerners at the center of early US cultural development abroad, Johnson conceives a romance of free trade with China as a quest narrative of national accomplishment in a global marketplace. Drawing from a richly descriptive cross-cultural archive, the book presents key moments in early relations among the twenty-first century's superpowers through memoirs, biographies, epistolary journals, magazines, book reviews, fiction and poetry by Melville, Twain, Whitman, and others, travel narratives, and treaties, as well as maps and engraved illustrations. Paying close attention to figurative language, generic forms, and the social dynamics of print cultural production and circulation, Johnson shows how authors, editors, and printers appealed to multiple overlapping audiences in China, in the United States, and throughout the world.

Following the Second World War, the United States would become the leading 'neoliberal' proponent of international trade liberalization. Yet for nearly a century before, American foreign trade policy was dominated by extreme economic nationalism. What brought about this pronounced ideological, political, and economic about-face? How did it affect Anglo-American imperialism? What were the repercussions for the global capitalist order? In answering these questions, The 'Conspiracy' of Free Trade offers the first detailed account of the controversial Anglo-American struggle over empire and economic globalization in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. The book reinterprets Anglo-American imperialism through the global interplay between Victorian free-trade cosmopolitanism and economic nationalism, uncovering how imperial expansion and economic integration were mired in political and ideological conflict. Beginning in the 1840s, this conspiratorial struggle over political economy would rip apart the Republican Party, reshape the Democratic Party, and redirect Anglo-American imperial expansion for decades to come.

The argument about the limits of Free Trade or Protectionism rages throughout the world to this day. Following the Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, free trade became one of the most distinctive defining features of the British state, and of British economic, social, and political life. Whilethe United States, much of the British Empire, and the leading European Powers turned towards protectionism before 1914, Britain alone held to a policy which had seemingly guaranteed power and prosperity. This book seeks to explain the political history of this tenacious loyalty. While the TariffReform opponents of free trade have been much studied, this is the first substantial account, based on a wide range of printed and archival sources, which explains the primacy of free trade in nineteenth- and early-twentieth century Britain. It also shows that by the centenary of the Repeal of theCorn Laws in 1946, although British free traders lamented the death of Liberal England, they heralded, under American leadership, the rebirth of the liberal international order.

International trade has shaped the modern world, yet until now no single book has been available for both economists and general readers that traces the history of the international economy from its earliest beginnings to the present day. Power and Plenty fills this gap, providing the first full account of world trade and development over the course of the last millennium. Ronald Findlay and Kevin O'Rourke examine the successive waves of globalization and "deglobalization" that have occurred during the past thousand years, looking closely at the technological and political causes behind these long-term trends. They show how the expansion and contraction of the world economy has been directly tied to the two-way interplay of trade and geopolitics, and how war and peace have been critical determinants of international trade over the very long run. The story they tell is sweeping in scope, one that links the emergence of the Western economies with economic and political developments throughout Eurasia centuries ago. Drawing extensively upon empirical evidence and informing their systematic analysis with insights from contemporary economic theory, Findlay and O'Rourke demonstrate the close interrelationships of trade and warfare, the mutual interdependence of the world's different regions, and the crucial role these factors have played in explaining modern economic growth. Power and Plenty is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the origins of today's international economy, the forces that continue to shape it, and the economic and political challenges confronting policymakers in the twenty-first century.

This book examines the notion of "free trade" and the issues raised by adopting the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Essays by Ralph Nader, Jerry Brown, William Greider, Margaret Atwood, Mark Ritchie, Wendell Berry, Pat Choate, and others.

On 1 January 2004, the US-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (USSFTA) came into force. The USSFTA was the result of a two-year negotiation process which started towards the end of the Clinton Administration and concluded under the Bush Administration. How did the negotiation process straddle the two administrations? What is the rationale for the FTA? What were the unique features of the negotiating process? Was negotiating with the US different from negotiating with other countries? How will the FTA benefit the two countries? What is the impact on ASEAN, APEC and the WTO?This book captures some of the personal insights thrown up in the negotiations and offers highlights and analysis of the USSFTA. Contributors to the volume include the Chief Negotiators of the two delegations, the US and Singapore Ambassadors, key negotiators and close observers of the process. Selected key documents pertaining to the USSFTA process have also been included. This book is a comprehensive reader on the story behind the negotiations of the USSFTA.