Three treaties were signed between Britain and Austria in the decade of the 1860s, as British businessmen and diplomats tried to spread to gospel of Free Trade amid the protectionist gloom. Britain's patient endeavours to convert other nations to the policy of Free Trade were made in the hopes of advancing economic liberalism and furthering the trend towards free exchanges and international divisions of labour, a development which, it was hoped, would prove conducive to worldwide economic growth and amity among nations. But all of Britain's efforts were met with dogged resistance.

This work is a model monograph, derived largely from hitherto untapped primary sources (the Austrian State archives and the Public Record Office in London). In narrating the history of these parleys and negotiations it sheds light on European commercial diplomacy a century ago, when the British system began to be rebuffed by other European nations; it also reveals the personal influences underlying shifts in imperial and imperialist policies.

Karl F. Helleiner is a professor emeritus of economic history, University of Toronto.

Karl Helleiner's profile page