By 1903, the Pax Britannica was beginning to fray. Queen Victoria was in her grave and so were Disraeli, Gladstone, and Salisbury. Imperial anxieties had begun to resurface. Across the political class, a single fear crystallised: that Britain could no longer compete with the monolithic might of emerging nation-states. Questions were posed in German steel and Chicago grain. Meanwhile, the Boer War exposed Britain’s unpreparedness to defend, let alone integrate, its Empire. The creed of ‘splendid isolation’ now seemed increasingly out of step with the new century.

While the world had turned protectionist in the 1880s, Britain alone held the Free Trade line. Yet manufacturers in the North and Midlands grew uneasy. The predictable growth of exports that had marked the Victorian heyday could no longer be taken for granted. German and American trusts and cartels loomed over British markets. The landed interest fared no better, having never recovered from Peel’s repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 – the first time the issue of free trade had split the Conservative Party. Working men, enfranchised in 1867 and 1884, were beginning to wield the vote as an instrument of reform.

Imperialists looked to post-Bismarckian Germany for a model, conjuring up three pillars of imperial statecraft. They dreamed of Staatsverein, political integration through imperial federation; Zollverein, economic union via customs union; and Kriegsverein, military unity through the integration of imperial forces. These were their answers to the central dilemma of reconciling colonial autonomy with imperial cohesion: the old tension between imperium et libertas, which had haunted British governance since the 18th century.

The confidence of the late Victorians gave way to an Edwardian anxiety: fear of the great continental powers, faith in imperial federations, and a deepening conviction that Britain must stand at the head of a politically unified empire – if it was to stand at all.

Joseph Chamberlain, MP for Birmingham, the ‘Tribune of the People’, was the most dynamic statesman in the empire. Yet he remained a political outsider: a non-Anglican, an ex-Radical, and a Liberal Unionist in formal coalition with the Conservatives. Chamberlain sought power, not status – to act, not merely be someone. And in early 1903, he was preparing to revolutionise British politics.

As Secretary of State for the Colonies since 1895, Chamberlain believed that he could seize the course of events and bend them to his will. His master plan had been long gestating since the Colonial Conference of 1897. Britain, he argued, should abandon her rigid adherence to free trade and cultivate a system of preferential commerce with the colonies. Chamberlain proposed sacrificing foreign trade for intra-imperial growth. Economic union would lead to political and military integration. Thus was born the doctrine of imperial preference. 

Chamberlain launched his campaign in a thunderclap: his Birmingham speech of 15 May was, in the words of Leopold Amery, ‘a challenge to Free Trade as direct and provocative as those which Luther nailed to the church door at Wittenberg’. It electrified imperialists worried about Britain’s relative decline. Chamberlain added a radical twist: the tax burden should help fund social reforms. The Duke of Devonshire lamented that Chamberlain ‘had not given the least sustained thought to the consequences of his theories’. Prime Minister Arthur Balfour described Chamberlain as ‘rather ill, rather irritable, and very tired’.

Chamberlain’s plan had a fatal flaw. Most of Britain’s trade was with foreign countries; colonial trade made up only a small fraction. By the late-19th century, free trade was not merely orthodoxy – it was the foundation of Britain’s fiscal and economic system. Many Conservatives, just like their Liberal rivals, remained committed to it with near-religious zeal. Chamberlain’s grand scheme foundered on this reality, and he himself conceded that his plans would mean dearer food for the poor. A mixture of Cabinet intrigue, ideological resistance, and tactical miscalculation ultimately blocked his advance.

The Conservative Party had been under the control of the ‘Hotel Cecil’, Lord Salisbury and his nephew, Balfour, for over a quarter of a century. A patrician of charm and intellect, Balfour dabbled in metaphysics and the Occult. As premier, he was determined to avoid another Conservative schism. He attempted a delicate synthesis: to uphold free trade in principle, while permitting retaliatory tariffs against nations that practised protectionism. Salisbury himself had spoken favourably of Retaliation in the 1880s.

So, Balfour proposed changing the law to allow the British government to impose tariffs selectively, responding in kind to protectionist measures abroad. This was not, he insisted, a rejection of free trade. Rather, retaliation was a corrective means of compelling other nations to return to liberal trading norms.

Not all agreed. Many saw Balfour’s policy as a slippery slope to protectionism, even more insidious than Chamberlain’s proposals. Winston Churchill, who crossed the floor over the issue, feared the transformation of the Conservatives: ‘The old Conservative Party will disappear, and a new Party will arise – perhaps like the Republican Party – rich, materialist and secular, who will cause the lobbies to be crowded with the touts of protected industries.’ The Liberal leader, Campbell-Bannerman agreed: retaliation, not preference, was the real threat. For many, Balfour’s compromise was neither compelling in principle nor convincing in practice.

Tariff reformers lost the General Election of 1906 but triumphed within the party. Of the 157 Conservatives returned, 109 were committed tariff reformers. Only 16 declared for Free Trade. The triumph of tariff reform inside the party remains something of a paradox, given its utter rejection by the electorate. In truth, the movement’s champions had gravely underestimated the political obstacles they would face, even if they had managed to win popular support. Balfour’s intellectualism proved politically fatal.

The party persisted in a cause that had already brought it to ruin. After the 1906 debacle and Chamberlain’s stroke, tariff reform remained an article of faith. It was a proven vote-loser, yet seemingly irremovable. Balfour, meanwhile, lost three elections in succession, presided over a divided and demoralised party from 1899 to 1910, and later emerged with a gilded reputation as a servant of the state. He was eventually replaced by Andrew Bonar Law, a plain-speaking businessman. As for Chamberlain, he died in 1914, his dream unfulfilled.

The tariff fixation lingered, however. In 1923, when Stanley Baldwin sought a mandate for tariffs, he lost. In 1924, the party abandoned tariffs and won handsomely. By 1930, the issue had once again threatened to drive Baldwin to the brink. And when, in 1932, the Conservatives finally enacted a modest programme of tariff reform under Neville Chamberlain, it bore little resemblance to his father’s grand imperial vision.

A century after the Edwardian Conservatives’ assault on free trade, economic nationalism and neo-imperial rhetoric once again occupies the political mainstream. The United States, long the high church of global capitalism, now proceeds with tariffs and industrial policy in the name of national strength.

President Trump’s 10 per cent universal tariff, retaliatory tariffs, and targeted measures against China and Mexico, channel the same protective impulse that once gripped Chamberlain, Balfour, and their contemporaries. Similarly, Trump’s tariffs reflect the anxieties of a global power. Mutatis mutandis, the historical parallels suggest familiar risks. As in 1906, these policies may fracture existing coalitions more readily than they forge new ones. National renewal can arrive hand in hand with uncertainty and political division. Tariffs may rally a committed base, but risk alienating moderates, businesses, and allies. The Republican Party, like the Edwardian Conservatives, may reorganise around a principle that commands devotion within the party, but provokes suspicion beyond it.

In 1906, the British electorate proved more cautious than the Tories had imagined, and less malleable than they had hoped. Though the public rejected their dream, the party continued to pursue it. Both imperial preference and retaliatory tariffs remained doctrines in search of a majority.

Today, the question remains open: will tariff reform prove popular in the party caucus but costly at the ballot box, or might it forge a durable political alliance and reshape the predominant commercial paradigm? We shall see. History teaches that such efforts are rarely cost-free, and that a doctrine often outlasts its moment.