LOSS OF LEADERSHIP^449After 1815 the British, sure of their hegemony, began abolishing the
restrictions introduced in an earlier mercantilist spirit: thus prohibitions
on export of machinery and emigration of artisans and some major tar
iff barriers and navigation acts. At the same time, using unimpeachable
arguments about division of labor and gains from trade, they sought to
persuade other countries to reciprocate. They did make some progress,
but unfortunately for comparative advantage and classical doctrine,
most other countries saw this as a device to keep them in their agri
cultural place. Free trade became British dogma and practice; most
other countries flirted with it and found the water cold. Or perceived
it as a British trap: if perfidious Albion wanted it, it couldn't be good.^17
Meanwhile British industry throve in a world that wanted cheap
manufactures. If European nations would not take these goods, buy
ers could be found on other continents, the more so as improved trans
port steadily lowered the cost of delivery. When in 1851 the British
held the first worldwide exposition of technical and industrial achieve
ment, they thought to celebrate their own mastery. They gave room
and prizes to other, lesser nations, to be sure, but the principal theme
was Britain as workshop to the world. And to the future: the very ar
chitecture of the Crystal Palace, hall to the exhibits, marked farewell to
stone and brick and welcomed in a new age of iron and glass, of light
and open space, of modular components and mechanized washings. It
was the equivalent of the medieval shift from heavy Romanesque to
vaulting Gothic. (Such boldness entailed a few surprises. The palace
was big enough to plant trees; the trees received birds; the birds left
souvenirs on the throngs below. What to do? Shoot them? But how to
do that without breaking the glass walls and roof? "Sparrow hawks,
Ma'am," suggested the duke of Wellington to Her Majesty the
Queen.)
Even then, small clouds appeared. Some potential competitors dis
played quality and taste that made their products unbeatable: French
silks, Saxon porcelains, or vintage wines, for example. But that was an
old story, perfectiy comprehensible in a regime of inherited skills, nat
ural favors, and comparative advantage. More vexing were signs of
non-British technological superiority in a branch that Britain tended to
see as its own—the production of machines and machine-made objects.
The first hints of trouble came in American clocks and firearms, mass-
produced with quasi-interchangeable parts.^18 In 1854, the British gov
ernment sent a mission to the United States to look further into this
"American system." Back came the message that, yes, the British had
to start learning again.^19