The roots of globalisation.(The Global Reach of Empire: Britain's Maritime Expansion in the Indian and Pacific Oceans 1764-1815)(book)(Book Review)

The Global Reach of Empire: Britain's Maritime Expansion in the Indian and Pacific Oceans 1764-1815, by Alan Frost; The Miegunyah Press, 2003, $59.95.

CONTEMPORARY political debate often centres on protection of markets, removal of trade barriers and the ethical and social issues raised by economic globalisation. While the issues discussed are often idiosyncratic to the modem period, with its specific technologies and ideologies, the broad lineaments of such debate also underpinned discussion of colonial expansion in the eighteenth century.

During the Middle Ages various people sought to protect their markets through the establishment of merchant, farmer and worker guilds, and various other organisations that spoke up for the economic interests of specific groups. The change from monarchic to parliamentary rule that occurred throughout Europe in the modem period resulted in the erosion of such practices as the emerging middle classes sought greater freedom of industry and commerce in regard to both export and import markets.

The most fully articulated and influential expression of these developments was given by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (1776). Smith wrote that "prohibitions ought not to be imposed on the import of foreign manufactures" and that "boundaries ought not to be given to native ones". Today we have come to accept such notions as the basis of conservative economic theory, providing the rationale for free trade and globalisation. Yet at the time such thinking was extremely radical, weakening notions of economic privilege and centralism, and instead focusing on the wealth of entire nations and their populations as opposed to specific groups.

Smith was concerned with both national and international markets. If the invisible hand of the free market were allowed full rein, he believed, individual efforts would as a matter of course contribute to the greater good. By pursuing economic self-interest the citizen is unknowingly contributing to the wealth of the national economy. Presumably, if nations pursue the same strategy the global economy will flourish to the benefit of all. Obviously the international perspective on trade perfectly suited the then expanding empires of Europe. It not only provided economic sanction for activities in the various colonies, it also gave those activities an air of moral righteousness.

In The Global Reach of Empire, Alan Frost reframes the history of settlement in Australia in the context of such debates. In emphasising the emerging sense of the possibilities of global trade among British officials and parliamentary members in the late eighteenth century, Frost offers an alternative to traditional historical accounts of settlement that tend to focus on convict transportation and military strategy.

The voyages of Cook that were undertaken to explore the Pacific Ocean, particularly on the Resolution (1772-75 and 1776-80), greatly expanded Europe's conception of the globe. During these voyages Cook dispelled the notion of a rich, populous Terra Australis, discovered numerous islands such as Tonga, Fiji and the New Hebrides group and, as Frost evocatively writes, he also pioneered exploration of the "weird Antarctic regions, with their phantasmagorical southern lights, their eerie silences broken by the noises of sounding whales and crumbling ice".