Episode 5 - The Mother of All Trade Deals

Uploaded: 3 Feb 2018

How do you prevent a seemingly inevitable war?

Well, peaceful cooperation is a start - free exchange of goods between nations is for the benefit of all. It create wealth for those involved, but that wealth also binds the two peoples together in mutual respect and interest (if not friendship!) - a prize that war and head-on rivalry can only destroy.

This is not to say there were only winners from the new treaty. Certainly those individuals who viewed their interests as being the traditions of farming and other related industries saw their comfortable hegemony in the economy disrupted.

Lord Palmerston addresses the Commons during the debate on  Cobden-Chevalier