ntrast to Britain the industrial interests in most other major industrializing nations were opposed to liberalization of trade protection. The British stood out in that they managed to have a comparative advantage in the production of most manufactured goods at the time. Any large nation which chose to engage in free trade with Great Britain would therefore see their main industrial industries annihilated, especially the textiles industry, and be forced to specialize elsewhere. Nations like France, the United States, the German Zollverein and Russia were not inclined to abandon their industrial infrastructure to the ravages of free trade without seeing the potential benefits first. Thus the trend in Britain, which I have up until now purported to be the main driving force behind trade deregulation throughout the industrializing world, does not in and of itself manage to explain the global trend towards deregulation. There are two other main factors which ensured the success of the British system of free trade up until the 1870s. First there is the Cobden-Chevalier treaty of 1860 which revived the concept of most favored nation, essentially a way of granting any trade concessions made to one nation to all nations simultaneously. In addition, it paved the way for the negotiation of a plethora of other trade agreements, leading to a universal reduction of tariff barriers. This had a dual-effect: due to the tangle of international treaties it became difficult for any individual nation to hike tariffs, and it set a precedent for reducing tariffs even in highly protectionist nations such as France. A second major factor was the success of Great Britain in pursuing a free trade doctrine. The general liberal philosophy at the time equated the economic rise of Great Britain with its free trade policies, and created the belief that failure to liberalize economically would lead to an inability to compete internationally. Michel Chevalier wrote abo...
