Free Trade and Fantasies of the Global in British Literature and Political Economy, 1814-1865
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RICE UNIVERSITY Contested Cargoes: Free Trade and Fantasies of the Global in British Literature and Political Economy, 1814-1865 by Ay§e Qelikkol A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE Doctor of Philosophy A p p r o v e d, T h e s is Io m m it t e e : Robert L. Patten, Lynette S. Autrey Professor in Humanities Helena Michie, Professor of English, Agnes Cullen Arnold Chair in Humanities Betty Joseph, Associate Professor of English I 4 ^ — Pejer C. Caldwell, Professor, Chair, History and Professor of German and Slavic Studies Houston, Texas JUNE 2005 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 3261755 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. 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Abstract Contested Cargoes: Free Trade and Fantasies of the Global in British Literature and Political Economy, 1814-1865 by Ay§e £elikkol Literary depictions of commodity circulation across national borders and tropes of free trade in economic discourses reveal that in early- and mid-nineteenth-century Britain, international commerce metonymically represented unstoppable traffic of all kinds between distant lands. Discursively, legal and illegal forms of free trade, from smuggling to government-sanctioned importation, became signifiers of unrestrained intellectual, sexual, and affective exchange. Textual representations of border-crossing commerce facilitated meditations Britain’s relationship to the rest of the world, helped imagine cosmopolitan experience, and produced competing models for a world bound by capitalist exchange. The evaluation of global capitalism in early- and mid-nineteenth century Britain relied on moral structures instated by existing nationalist, gender-related, and religious ideologies even as it produced new ways of understanding the world as a totality. Narratives and tropes of treasonous betrayal (chapter one) and rampant sexuality (chapter two), as well as those of marital union (chapter three) and religious devotion (chapter four), helped ascribe both negative and positive moral valences to free trade. The figures of the smuggler, the Jew, the prostitute, and the cosmopolitan merchant, appearing in diverse genres such as the historical novel, nautical fiction, melodrama, epic poetry, and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the social problem novel, mediated discussions of the social and subjective effects of laissez-faire. From Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley novels and John Galt’s Annals of the Parish to Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit and Captain Marryat’s Snarleyyow, from Harriet Martineau’s Dawn Island and Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley to Ebenezer Elliott’s Com-Law Rhymes and R. H. Home’s Orion, literary works addressed how international commerce would transform subjective experience. Free trade appeared to correspond to such diverse experiences as the dissipation of political allegiances, the breaking down of self-control, the cultivation of romantic attachment, and religious faith. The ideological function of the translation of economic phenomena into subjective experience was to criticize or justify global capitalism, not on the grounds of whether it would render Britons more prosperous, but based upon its imagined effects on inter-personal and international relations. The understanding of global commerce as a morally socially transformative force, which informs present-day debates about globalization, was already present at the free-market economy’s moment of origin. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Acknowledgments I would like to thank my committee members, Bob Patten, Helena Michie, Betty Joseph, and Carl Caldwell for their invaluable mentoring, generous intellectual support, and insightful criticism. Without their tireless attention and detailed responses to my arguments and analyses, this project could not have existed. In addition to my committee, Professors Scott Derrick and Ed Snow have spared much time teaching me to improve my prose and argumentative framing—I am grateful for it. I am also indebted to Duncan Hasell and Michael Meeuwis for sharing their knowledge—and books—with me over the years. I thank Elizabeth Fenton deeply for her unending willingness to listen and respond to my ideas. I owe my deepest debt of gratitude to my parents, Oznur and Ahmet Qelikkol, for instilling in me the love for reading, writing, and critical thinking. Without their constant encouragement and confidence in me, I would not have dared start in an entirely new field, English, after getting my B.S.. I am also grateful to Tony Ro for his unfailing emotional support and for all his encouragement along the way. I owe much to the English Department at Rice University for providing many so opportunities for enjoyable intellectual exchange and professionalisation training. Finally, as I wish to acknowledge, the Lodieska Stockbridge Vaughan Dissertation Fellowship supported me during the 2004-2005 academic year. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Table of Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 1: “Traders as Traitors: Scottish Smuggling in John Galt, Walter Scott, and Peter Buchan” ................................................................................... 25 Chapter 2: “Intercourse: Commercial and Sexual Circulation in Frederick Marryat and Charles Dickens”.............................................................................. 71 Chapter 3: “Coinciding Interests: Commercial And Familial Reconciliation In Radical Politics, Harriet Martineau, And Charlotte Bronte” ............................... 120 Chapter 4: “God’s Goods: The Religious Antiquation of Free Trade in Ebenezer Elliott, R. H. Home, and G. P. R. James” .......................................... 157 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 201 N otes....................................................................................................................... 209 Bibliography .......................................................................................................... 232 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 Introduction This study has its roots in a simple observation. While preparing for my comprehensive exams, I noticed the ubiquity of commodities moving across national borders in nineteenth-century fiction. From silk and cinnamon to underwear and soap, the innumerable commodities that were imported and smuggled into the Britain seemed to enjoy a privileged presence in literary works—and so did the merchant sailors, smugglers, and pirates who dealt these items. Having picked a thematic topic for this project—the global circulation of commodities—I began to ask questions about the nineteenth-century valences of inter- or transnational commerce, which I thought would lead me to the core of the project. What were people’s attitudes toward commerce across national borders? In what ways did commodity circulation appear to threaten the nation state? To look for an answer, I turned to novels. In Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley novels, for example, commodity influx from the Continent to the British Isles nearly prevents the forging of a unified Britain—a pattern that reveals an antagonism between free trade and national prowess. As chapter one will show, this is a reading I still pursue, though it is no longer the thrust of the argument. What I did not understand in these very early stages of the project is that attitudes toward border-crossing commerce do not have to be excavated through close readings of literary texts. There is an entire body of contemporary discourse devoted to the topic, namely political economy, in which many writers openly condemned or embraced international commerce. Consequently, many treatises, articles, and pamphlets discuss, sometimes in excruciating detail, the pros and cons of laissez-faire, the economic system Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. that would allow for the unregulated circulation of commodities across national borders. And predictably enough, when I turned to political economy, I found numerous declarations that free trade would impoverish the nation and even destroy it. Suddenly, my former discovery, that through the Waverley novels we learn about an imagined