The Short-Lived German Free Trade Movement
In even the most reasonably-informed accounts of classical liberalism, those that eschew the inclusion of the likes of Mill and Rousseau, the spotlight almost invariably falls on Britain and France—on the likes of Adam Smith, Richard Cobden, Frédéric Bastiat, and Benjamin Constant. Yet the German tradition of liberalism—so often overshadowed by the rise of Bismarckian statism, Marxism, and social democracy—played a critical role in shaping the transnational liberal movement of the 19th century.