The first great era of globalisation lasted from the middle decades of the nineteenth century to the 1920s, built upon Britain's unilateral embrace of free trade. The inter-war period saw a calamitous retreat from open trade policies, with American exports plummeting from $5bn in 1929 to $1.6bn in 1933. After World War II, the current wave of globalisation began, based around multilateral reduction of tariffs, first under the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs from 1947 and, since 1994, under the World Trade Organisation.

History teaches us important lessons about trade and the benefits of an open trade and investment climate. In the right-hand column, you will find links to stories that are particularly relevant to the modern trade debate, beginning with the repeal of the Corn Laws in the UK in 1846. Well, possibly with the exception of interstellar trade - though Star Wars fans will remember that a trade dispute started the fall from grace.

Trade lessons from history:

The repeal of the Corn Laws and unilateral liberalisation during the nineteenth century

Lessons from the 1930s about the dangers of protectionism

'Why globalisation might have started in the eighteenth century'

The theory of interstellar trade