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Constructing Free Trade: from Manchester Boosterism to Global ConstructingBlackwell Publishing, Ltd. free trade: from Manchester boosterism to global management Eric Sheppard The free trade doctrine, now global common knowledge, has followed a complex spatio-temporal path of knowledge production from its origins in Manchester at the turn of the nineteenth century. While grounded in normative and cognitive claims, its transformation from local self-interest to global doctrine was a result of the scale-jumping tactics of the Anti-Corn Law League, combined with the popularity in Western Europe of private property liberalism and the hegemonic global positionality of early nineteenth-century Britain. Corn Law repeal in 1846 in London was constructed as the point in space–time where doctrine became practice, and Britain’s subsequent prosperity was seen as proof of its validity. After 1880, except in Britain until 1914 and the colonies, performance belied the doctrine as progressive liberalism became influential, and import-substituting industrialization an effective catch-up strategy, for other nations. The free trade doctrine was reasserted, however, with the emergence of US hegemony, as a rationale for breaking up non-US colonial preference systems and, more recently, neoliberalism. The free trade doctrine is now performed routinely under the auspices of the World Trade Organization. Nevertheless, it remains a local epistemology, whose truth-like status is kept insulated from rigorous challenge by alternative epistemologies and practices. key words trade knowledge production liberalism spatiality Department of Geography, University of Minnesota, MN 55455, USA email: [email protected] revised manuscript received 15 April 2005 Introduction they profess their patriotism or religion, and finance markets are ready to slap them on the wrist if they The laws of economics have not changed: international deviate. Countries deviating from free trade ortho- trade remains the brightest hope for pulling much of the doxy risk a run on their currency, and face difficulty world out of poverty. (The Guardian 27 February 2004) raising capital or attracting investments. Subscrip- The doctrine of free trade, i.e. that unrestricted com- tion to the free trade doctrine is now taken out modity exchange between places is the best way to through membership in the World Trade Organiza- advance their mutual prosperity, has attained the tion in Geneva, to which nation-states accede the status of ‘a scientific fact as indisputable as gravity’ power (after due deliberation and an appeals (Trentmann 1998, 226). Its truth-like status is re- process) to overrule national and local policy in the inforced daily through a variety of social practices name of this higher norm. In short, the free trade extending through the manifold spaces of social doctrine is common knowledge: Creationists are life. In the academy, it is deduced mathematically in now more likely to be encountered than free trade business and economics courses worldwide.1 It is sceptics in this era of neoliberal global regulation. restated daily in mainstream media outlets, thereby The ubiquity of this doctrine is paralleled by its becoming a standard with respect to which the public durability. Discussions surrounding the free trade has learnt to judge territorial economic policy. doctrine have changed surprisingly little during Politicians profess their belief in it as frequently as the last two centuries.2 Notwithstanding successive Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 30 151–172 2005 ISSN 0020-2754 © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2005 152 Eric Sheppard generalizations, elaborations and criticisms of of the free trade doctrine as scientific knowledge, Ricardo’s 1817 principle of comparative advantage, particularly through appeals to logical coherence today’s discussions are minor variations on those and empirical correspondence. Questioning the of yesteryear. For example, trade proponents today adequacy of such cognitive claims, I describe how its cite a prime benefit as exposing domestic industry adoption and enactment in 1840s Britain catalyzed to the rigours of foreign competition – a point a variety of moral, cultural and social processes. made in 1826 by British Prime Minister Huskisson, Whereas conventional accounts suggest that the citing the example of how industry in Macclesfield rigour and accuracy of trade theory accounts for its and Spitalfield prospered under the spur of increased success, I argue that the social efficacy of free trade, imports (Kindleberger 1975, 28). Opponents’ argu- culminating in Corn Law repeal, shaped the emer- ments for trade restrictions to encourage import gence of a logical theory of comparative advantage substituting industrialization echo Alexander to rationalize it. I then trace the uneven historical Hamilton’s 1791 Report on Manufactures and Friedrich geography of the practice of free trade since 1846, List’s (1841 (1991)) theory of infant industries.3 during which the shifting positionality of various Contemporary AFL/CIO (American Federation of participants in the global economy legitimated broad- Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) scale departures from the doctrine, albeit culminating concerns that free trade undermines American in its re-emergence as a defining principle of US- wages duplicate 1840s concerns that ‘high duties led neoliberal globalization. In conclusion, I point were necessary to cut out the competition of the ill- towards ways in which the adequacy of our under- paid laborers of Europe, and to maintain the high standing and practice of trade can be broadened, wages of the laborers of the United States’ (Taussig and alternatives envisioned, once it is accepted that 1888, cited in O’Rourke and Williamson 2000, 115).4 the truth-like status of the free trade doctrine has The durability and ubiquity of the doctrine belie yet to be adequately interrogated.5 its local origins, from which it has stretched, and at times contracted, through space and time to attain its current status. Free trade’s acceptability as a Science, knowledge and space practical doctrine is generally associated with the Intense debates about the grounds for scientific repeal of the British Corn Laws, in London on knowledge and truth have followed the dismantling 25 June 1846, itself routinely traced to the successful of the logical empiricist programme in the 1960s. political entrepreneurship of a group of Manchester These ‘science wars’ counterpose two positions. On industrialists led by Richard Cobden. Now it is an the one hand are claims that scientific knowledge influential organizational principle of globalization, can be arrived at through practising a foolproof managed from the World Trade Organization offices process of knowledge production (such as logical in Geneva. In this paper, I seek to trace the spatio- empiricism or Popper’s critical rationalism). On temporal process of knowledge creation through the other are claims that knowledge production is which this has happened. I examine how a ‘local inevitably a social process, and that all knowledge epistemology’, variously dubbed Manchesterism, is coloured by this process. In the former view, truth Manchester liberalism or the Manchester School, emerges via a scientific practice that eliminates came to be translated into global knowledge. I do alternative accounts due to their inadequacy; in the not offer an authoritative history of the free trade latter, there are only truth-like claims (cf. Latour doctrine, but instead inquire into its lineage. I seek to 1987). Helen Longino (2002) argues that these do this not only to trace its mobility through space debates between science studies and philosophers and time, and of the economic practices pursued in of science belie a shared dualism, the separation its name, but also to create a vantage point from of social from cognitive approaches to knowledge which to assess whether the dismissal of various production.6 Science studies provide compelling heterodox challenges to the doctrine is justified. accounts of how scientific knowledge is socially I begin by conceptualizing the geography of constructed, at the expense of downplaying norm- knowledge production, i.e. how local beliefs attain ative judgements about the adequacy of knowledge the truth-like status of global knowledge, with par- (cf. Haraway 1997; Latour 2004). By contrast, philo- ticular attention to contested cognitive and social sophers of science make normative judgements to accounts of this process. I then review and assess the separate science/knowledge from opinion/belief, cognitive claims commonly used to justify the status but limit themselves to individualist, cognitive Constructing free trade 153 principles (such as rationality or observation) that Such radical reconsideration certainly characterized neglect the obviously social dimension to the prac- Corn Law repeal. Poovey’s project of historical tice of science. By stressing the social nature of ‘epistemology’ is always already historical geo- both cognition and knowledge, Longino seeks to graphic. Research on the spatiality of knowledge break down this dualism. production suggests, and her own analysis confirms, A ‘plurality of adequate and epistemically accept- that such historical shifts are always framed by local able explanations or theories can be generated by conditions – both the regional history of episte- a variety of different factors in any situation of mological debate and local material conditions. The inquiry’ (Longino 2002,
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