Britain backed free trade with tariffs protecting its own textiles from Indian competition

Evidence

While Bengal was despoiled, Britain’s textile industry was protected from Indian competition; a matter of importance, because Indian producers enjoyed a comparative advantage in printed cotton textile fabrics for the expanding market in England…Parliamentary Acts of 1700 and 1720 forbade the import of printed fabrics from India, Persia, and China; all goods seized in contravention of this edict were to be confiscated, sold by auction, and reexported… Later, British taxes also discriminated against local cloth within India, which was forced to take inferior British textiles. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2848

Categorization

• CANDY: Britain banned Indian printed cottons in 1700-1720 while plundering Bengal and forcing Indians to buy inferior British cloth — a compact hypocrisy anecdote.
• XREF: Resonates with Milgrom’s law-merchant material on how trade institutions and tariffs structured pre-modern commerce — here the tariff is overtly protectionist rather than trust-building.