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6
International Trade, Domestic
Coalitions, and Liberty:
Comparative Responses to
the Crisis of 1873–1896
PETER ALEXIS GOUREVITCH
Peter Alexis Gourevitch examines the impact upon the trade policies
and political coalitions of four countries of the Great Depression
of 1873–1896, during which Germany and France adopted high
tariffs on both agricultural and industrial products, Great Britain
maintained its historic policy of free trade, and the United States
protected industry but not agriculture. In attempting to explain
this pattern of response, Gourevitch compares four alternative
hypotheses: economic explanations, emphasizing domestic societal
interests; political system explanations, focusing on domestic statist
variables; international system explanations, combining
international political and economic factors; and economic ideology
explanations. Domestic societal interests supplemented by a
concern with state structures, he concludes, provide the most
persuasive account of these four cases. Gourevitch not only gives
a detailed and informative history of the trade policies of the four
great economic powers of the late nineteenth century, he also
provides a useful test of several of the main approaches in
international political economy.For social scientists who enjoy comparisons, happiness is finding a force or event
which affects a number of societies at the same time. Like test-tube solutions that
respond differently to the same reagent, these societies reveal their characters in
divergent responses to the same stimulus. One such phenomenon is the present
worldwide inflation/depression. An earlier one was the Great Depression of 1873–
- Technological breakthroughs in agriculture (the reaper, sower, fertilizers,
drainage tiles, and new forms of wheat) and in transportation (continental rail
networks, refrigeration, and motorized shipping) transformed international markets
for food, causing world prices to fall. Since conditions favored extensive grain
growing, the plains nations of the world (the United States, Canada, Australia,