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Peace, Trade and Treaties

Department of Legal Studies La Trobe University

This paper examines the theoretical nexus between capitalism and pacification, through analysis of the diplomatic struggles for protection of seaborne capital from warfare. The development of the case for trade immunity arose out of ideals of 'bourgeois pacifism', founded in laissez-faire theories that capitalist trade requires a peaceful environment. The translation of these ideals into treaty form was blocked by self-interested policies of nation states espousing laissez-faire principles, but interpreting or constructing them to imply policies other than pacifism. Historical correlation between capitalism and peace is thus low, precisely because bourgeois pacifism is only one construction of laissez-faire ideologies rather than, as often is argued, a systemic property of the capitalist mode of production.

Journal of Sociology, Vol. 26, No. 2, 170-186 (1990)
DOI: 10.1177/144078339002600202


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