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FREE-TRADE IDEOLOGY AND TRANSATLANTIC ABOLITIONISM: A HISTORIOGRAPHY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2015

Marc-William Palen*
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Imperial History, University of Exeter; Research Associate in U.S. Foreign Policy, U.S. Studies Centre, University of Sydney.

Abstract

This essay seeks to trace the many—and often conflicting—economic ideological interpretations of the transatlantic abolitionist impulse. In particular, it explores the contested relationship between free-trade ideology and transatlantic abolitionism, and highlights the understudied influence of Victorian free-trade ideology within the American abolitionist movement. By bringing together historiographical controversies from the American and British side, the essay calls into question long-standing conceptions regarding the relationship between free trade and abolitionism, and suggests new avenues for research.

Type
Symposium: American Political Economy From the Age of Jackson to the Civil War
Copyright
Copyright © The History of Economics Society 2015 

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