![]() ![]() The relationship between sea power and land power, and between both and liberty, was more nuanced than these great thinkers supposed. They both created powerful navies, ambitious merchant classes, sprawling empires, far-flung alliances and vital political philosophies - Hugo Grotius, John Locke - of global import. Adam Smith argued that “water carriage” opens a more extensive market than “land carriage.” David Hume noted that merchants who “possess the secret of importation and exportation” check the power of the ancient nobility and “tempt other adventurers to become their rivals in commerce.” In the 16th century, England and another smallish seafaring nation, the Dutch Republic, became the world’s first capitalist powers. The founders of modern economic liberalism saw numerous links between open seas and open societies. Land powers, by contrast, pursued a more authoritarian road to modernity: overbearing governments, standing armies necessitating efficient tax systems, dirigiste economies and above all, a hunger for yet more land (at its most monstrous manifestation, Adolf Hitler’s lebensraum). ![]() Sea powers, most notably Great Britain, created both the institutional and intellectual infrastructure of a distinctively liberal form of capitalism: limited government at home and free trade abroad supported by innovative stock markets and powerful navies. This is bad news for the future of both free trade and liberty. ![]()
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