Liberal Imperialism in Australian Political Thought, 1902–14

British politics immediately following the Boer War featured a group of politicians and intellectuals known as the Liberal Imperialists and this account explores the political thought of their Australian counterparts. Australian liberal intellectuals of particular relevance for this study were located in Melbourne, which was at that time the federal capital, and they were loosely clustered around the key political figure of the period, Alfred Deakin. The extended circle of Alfred Deakin provides scholars with a useful group of active intellectuals from whom it is possible to derive an idea of the Australian inflection given to Liberal Imperialist thought, concentrating on the intersection of notions of imperial unity and progressive social reform agendas which flourished in both Australia and Britain during the Edwardian era. The group of politicians and public intellectuals, comprising an overlapping membership including the Imperial Federation League, friends and associates of Alfred Deakin and the Boobooks Club, would subsequently evolve into the main Australian branch of the Round Table organisation. This article is concerned with discovering the outlines of the Australian version of Liberal Imperialist thought and especially the nature of the Australian inflection superimposed on this British set of ideas, as found in a variety of contemporary pamphlets, printed books and Boobooks minutes. The Australians were less pessimistic than Richard Jebb about the possibilities of a supranational imperial organisation but also insisted that such an organisation must respect the sovereignty of dominions. They differed from most of their British counterparts in supporting the widespread use of tariffs to nurture industry and they also supported the restrictive immigration position enshrined in the infamous White Australia policy, yet they were much in favour of the notion of a strong British navy.     

Supporting trust: credit assessment and debt recovery through Trade Protection Societies in Britain and Ireland, 1776–1992

From an initial foundation in London in 1776, Trade Protection Societies grew in numbers to reach a peak of about 120 in 1910. They provided inter-business and some consumer credit assessment, debt management and recovery. From the 1850s they coordinated activities through a national association that covered Britain and Ireland. The societies were processing millions of credit assessments for thousands of members in the 1960s, reaching over 100,000 assessments per day in the 1980s. They provided a voluntary institutional base drawing on networks of mutuality, supplying information between members and societies that was judged privileged by the Courts. This offered transaction costs advantages for the high frequency, short duration activity provided, and hedged against the risks of complex Court actions. They became a large-scale mechanism to encourage honouring of commitments, thus underpinning the trust necessary across an increasingly geographically integrated economy. Their evolution demonstrates the importance of city size and regional centres, with diffusion down the city rank-size distribution. However, some smaller centres, mainly in resorts, also developed TPSs. The spatial process linked individual traders and the smallest places into a national system of credit management. By the 1920s smaller TPSs became difficult to sustain and were taken over or became branches of the larger societies; but overall membership continued to increase. True consolidation occurred after 1971 when demand exploded after the removal of credit controls, with unit costs pressed down, leading to de-mutualisation.