The Making of the \u27Free Trade Nation\u27 : The Opening of the East India Trade and the British Manufacturing Industry, 1790s-1830s

The British East India Company was originally established to trade with Asia exclusively, but after the late eighteenth century it gradually ceased its commercial function by the 1830s in the course of Britain\u27s adoption of free trade. This paper reassesses this process and reveals the significance of the creation of provincial lobbyists\u27 nationwide network to organise their effective free trade campaigns. At the same time, the case study of James Finlay & Co. of Glasgow emphasises that provincial manufacturers got in closer business relationships with a part of the London mercantile community and private merchants in the East Indies through their trading activities, which turned into the instruments of their political influence in the debates on the Company\u27s Charter renewal. Furthermore, this paper reconsiders how the statesmen and the Company as well as the provincial manufacturers and merchants perceived Asian commodities in a series of free trade campaigns. Especially, regarding provincial manufacturers\u27 perceptions of Indian piece goods, by the 1790s, they recognised not only the advantage of their goods against the Indian rivals, but also its limitation. This was reflected in their claims for the restrictions on the import of Indian piece goods in the free trade movement of the early 1790s. However, because their perceptions had been changed by the early 1810s, in the depressed economic condition, the provincial lobbyists did not seriously demand the state to restrict the import of these goods but rather to open the Indian market for their own manufactured goods