1957 was the first Mont Pèlerin Society discussion of Liberalism and Colonialism

Evidence

The 1957 meeting was the occasion of the first MPS discussion of a topic dear to the heart of the Swiss diplomat, who had devoted so much of his life to the liberal civilising mission: ‘Liberalism and Colonialism’. … That night, he had a stroke. He would die the following April. At the same time, his neoliberal colleagues would increasingly despair at the failure of the liberal teleology underpinning Rappard’s life’s work. As newly independent nations demanded sovereignty over their natural resources, the neoliberals meeting in the mountains turned their minds to saving the international division of labour from a resurgence of ‘tribal’ morals. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 293

Categorization

• XREF: The MPS’s shift toward defending colonial resource extraction connects to the reader’s reading on market ethics and sovereign rights over resources.
• SEED: An essay angle: how ‘free market’ thinkers framed decolonization as a threat to free trade — the irony of market liberals defending empire.