‘‘FREE TRADE IS JESUS CHRIST AND Jesus Christ is Free Trade.” Among the litany of arresting claims made about free exchange in the 250-odd years since Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, this pronouncement by the British utilitarian and colonial official John Bowring in 1841 still stands out. That is not least because he was later responsible for dragging Britain into the Second Opium War, aiming to milk commercial concessions from China. Unfortunately, if not unexpectedly, thousands of deaths ensued.
The case crystallises some of the several paradoxes of nineteenth-century free trade. Born out of Scottish moral philosophy, infused with the certainty and fervour of Christian conviction, and backed by
