Neoliberals idealized the British free-trade empire as a postnational frame
Evidence
Robbins sought a form of human social organization that would clarify the distinction between the political and economic realms and dissolve the small, discrete collective of mutual identification—the miners or the Papuans—in a larger unity. Like Bonn, he saw the British as having provided such a transnational frame until 1931. The “open door policy” meant “that those parts of the Empire which were administered from at home were administered as if in trust for the world as a whole,” he wrote. “So long as foreign goods were admitted free and foreign investment and foreign settlement not discriminated against, the Englishman was not economically better off than the foreigner because his country had wide possessions … The administration of the free-trade Empire is not,” he said, “one of those episodes of history of which Englishmen need be ashamed.” — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 334
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the book’s overarching thesis — the ‘world of federations’ as the spatial frame insulating markets from democratic national control, later picked up in Hayek’s work. — connects to: Neoliberal international order modeled supervision on the British Empire and mandates system — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 265; Early neoliberals sought to radically shrink national sovereignty in service of free trade. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 440; A binding free-trade ITO was the first fully articulated postwar neoliberal utopia. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 441 (+1 more)
- ADDENDUM: Relates to ‘Grafting & Growth’ only loosely, but the idealization of empire-as-trust-for-the-world echoes the sacrifice article’s theme of empire justifying itself through noble framing.
- DEFINE: Clarifies the specifically neoliberal conception of federation: not sovereign states federating, but dissolving national economic identifications into a larger market unity — a federalism that bypasses democracy.
Broader Connections
- Neoliberal international order modeled supervision on the British Empire and mandates system
#corroborates(0.90) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 265