Cobdenism

Cobdenism is an economic ideology & the associated popular movement which perceives international free trade as living as a non-interventionist foreign policy as the key specification for prosperity together with world peace. this is the named after the British statesman and economist Richard Cobden and had its heyday of political influence in the British Empire during the mid-19th century, amidst and after the endeavour to abolish the Corn Laws.

Based on Adam Smith's assertion that full employment and economic growth require access to foreign markets, Cobden perceived the expansion of foreign trade as the leading means of increasing global prosperity and emphasized the importance of the international division of labour for economic progress. Akin to his ideal of Britain as an industrial society of small cooperating property owners, he believed in an international profile of small, independent nations attaining divided up prosperity through international trade. As Cobden saw Britain's involvement in empire as an unwelcome distraction of domestic investment into its industrial capacity, his writings became influential in anti-imperialist circles, being picked up by e.g. John A. Hobson. Moreover, it influenced the economic thinking of John Maynard Keynes, who was a staunch adherent of Richard Cobden's theories prior to the First World War, after which he abandoned Cobdenism in favor of "insular capitalism".

Rarely used today and already in decline by the end of the 19th century, Cobdenism was revived by some academics during the 1980s to help the liberalization of the British economy.