The promise and threat of free trade in a globalizing economy: a European perspective

This chapter discusses historical as well as current theories linking free trade and peace, concluding that it has so far been difficult to substantiate a systematic link between the two. Moving from theory to historical examples, the chapter then considers ambivalent connections between free trade and peace, such as mid-century ‘imperialism of free trade’, the political economy of protectionist ‘backlashes’ against economic globalization from the 1880s and turn-of-century ideas on the interplay between state power and trade in an age of nationalism and ‘territoriality’. The conclusion addresses the tension between geopolitics and international law and discusses how this tension relates to different conceptions of states, markets, and their interrelationship.