Kicking Away the Ladder. Development Strategy in Historical Perspective

For details see Brisco 1907, pp. 131-3, 148-55, 169-71; McCusker 1996, p. 358; Davis 1966, pp. 313-14; Wilson 1984, p. 267.

31

Interestingly, in the case of the drugs for dyeing, import duties were abolished in order to help the dyeing industries, while export duty was introduced ‘in order that their exportation might not assist foreign manufacturers’ (Brisco 1907, p. 139).

32

Brisco points out that the first duty drawback was granted under William and Mary to the exportation of beer, ale, mum, cider and perry (1907, p. 153). This is a policy that has been made famous by its successful use in the East Asian countries after the Second World War (see section 2.2.7 below).

33

Brisco 1907, p. 132.

34

Up to the late seventeenth century, most exports, like most imports, were taxed at 5 per cent. William III raised import taxes to 15-25 per cent, but kept the export tax at 5 per cent for most products (Davis, 1966, pp. 310 -11). The exceptions to the subsequent abolition of export duties under Walpole included alum, lead, lead ore, tin, tanned leather, coals, white woollen cloths, skins, and hairs (for further details see Brisco 1907, p. 131, n. 1).

35

Brisco points out that export subsidies under Walpole were not granted to infant industries, but to industries that had already been established (1907, p. 152).

36

In Brisco’s words, ‘Walpole understood that, in order successfully to sell in a strongly competitive market, a high standard of goods was necessary. The manufacturer, being too eager to undersell his rival, would lower the quality of his wares which, in the end, would reflect on other English-made goods. There was only one way to secure goods of a high standard, and that was to regulate their manufacture by governmental supervision’ (1907, p. 185). Once again, we find the modern version of such policy in countries like Japan and Korea during the postwar period, whose state trading agencies not only acted as information sources and marketing channels but also as a monitor of export product quality.

37

Brisco 1907, p. 129.

38

Davis 1966 argues that the period between 1763 and 1776 saw a particular proliferation of protectionist measures, which he believes was influential in shaping Adam Smith’s view on mercantilism in his Wealth of Nations, published in 1776.

39

The British export of cotton textile products to the East Indies, most of which went to India, increased from 6 per cent of total cotton textile exports after the Napoleonic Wars (c. 1815) increased to 22 per cent in 1840 and anything up to 60 per cent after 1873. (see Hobsbawm 1999, p. 125).

40

Of course, in most cases, the manufacturers’ support for free trade was a self-centred one, rather than out of their intellectual conversion to lofty principle of free trade – while supporting the repeal of the Corn Law, the cotton manufacturers remained opposed to free export of cotton machinery right until the end of the ban (first imposed in 1774) in 1842 (Musson 1978, p. 101; see section 2.3.3.).

41

Bairoch 1993, pp. 20-1.

42

The term comes from Gallagher and Robinson 1953.

43

Kindleberger 1978, p. 196. See Semmel 1970 for a classic study of the role of economic theory in the development of British trade policy between 1750 and 1850.

44

Kindleberger 1975; Reinert 1998. In 1840, Bowring advised the member states of German Zollverein to grow wheat and sell it to buy British manufactures (Landes 1998, p. 521).

45

The Political Writings of Richard Cobden, 1868, William Ridgeway, London, vol. 1, 150; as cited in Reinert 1998, p. 292.

46

Fielden 1969, p. 82.

47

Bairoch 1993, p. 46.

48

See Polanyi 1957 [1944], chapters 12-13. Polanyi argues that ‘there was nothing natural about