Trading with the Enemy

Perfidious Albion and Popish France; the Gallic cock versus the English lion. The eighteenth century was a time of shifting alliances and sudden reversals of fortune. Yet the antagonism between Britain and France remained remarkably consistent throughout this period. When not at war, the two nations squared off as commercial rivals, locked in an ongoing cycle of violence and enmity. This great power rivalry unfolded against a backdrop of new thinking about trade and its implications. As imperialism stoked the fires of commercial revolution, statesmen, philosophes and other pundits penned some of the defining works of modern political economy. Their writings reflected divergent worldviews and ideological leanings, hardened over the course of Britain and France’s ‘Second Hundred Years War’ into seemingly irreconcilable claims about the nature of wealth. Disciples of protectionism clashed with the acolytes of free trade, while the imperatives of commercial realpolitik collided with the cosmopolitan idealism of the Enlightenment

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