Free Trade Nation: Commerce, Consumption and Civil Society in Modern Britain

Abstract

Edwardian Free Trade campaigners knew how to exploit political symbolism. They liked to contrast the ‘big loaf’ obtainable under Britain's existing system of free imports with the protectionist ‘little loaf’. The latter, they alleged, was all that consumers would be able to afford if Joseph Chamberlain's Tariff Reform campaign triumphed. The example is familiar to all scholars of the period, but Frank Trentmann's brilliant book forces us to consider it afresh. To begin with, he reminds us that it was actually Chamberlain who first held up two loaves on a platform, in November 1903. There was very little difference in size between his loaves—he was trying to make the point that the duty he was proposing would have a minimal impact on consumers. Yet the stunt went wrong, as Free Traders not only ridiculed it but adapted and appropriated it for their own ends. Through his exploration of this and a wealth of other cases and episodes, Trentmann illuminates not only trade policy but British political culture as a whole.

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