Richard Cobden
Richard Cobden (born June 3, 1804 in Dunford near Heyshott , Chichester , Sussex , † April 2, 1865 in London ) was a British entrepreneur and the leading figure of Manchester liberalism and the free trade movement.
Life
Richard Cobden was born into a poor family; he had eleven siblings. Because the father was very poor and his existence was particularly endangered by the Corn Laws , Richard Cobden grew up with an uncle in Yorkshire . That enabled him to go to school. At the age of fifteen he became an employee in a London department store.
In 1831 Cobden founded a company in Lancashire that processed cotton. In 1833 he traveled to France, the Mediterranean and America. In 1836/37 he traveled to Turkey, Spain and Egypt. In 1839 Cobden founded the free trade movement ( Anti-Corn Law League ). During this time he worked with John Bright . In 1841 Cobden was elected to the House of Commons .
In 1840 Richard Cobden married Catherine Anne Williams from Welsh. The only son from this marriage died in 1856 at the age of 15. Cobden also had five daughters; including: Jane - she married the publisher Thomas Fisher Unwin , Ellen - the first of the three wives of the painter Walter Sickert - and Anne , the suffragette and wife of the bookbinder TJ Sanderson .
Work and creation
Cobden made speeches throughout England to popularize the idea of free trade; his Anti-Corn Law League supported him with over nine million brochures. As a result, over 2,000 petitions with over 1.5 million signatures were received in the House of Commons. The Conservative government (Tories) around Prime Minister Robert Peel could not avoid abolishing the Corn Laws. In 1846 the Corn Laws fell; after 1847 no Briton had to go hungry in peacetime.
The positive effects of the Corn Law case were exemplary. Gradually, one trade restriction after another fell, and the British economy, and especially the large working masses, always benefited. British workers erected monuments to him for the services of Cobden. Richard Cobden was considered the "Champion of the Poor".
The Cobden Treaty is a bilateral agreement between Great Britain and France from the year 1860. The Cobden Treaty ensured that 371 tariffs were levied on the British side alone, and served as a model throughout Europe.
Cobden's ideals
Richard Cobden's work was aimed solely at improving the situation of the poor. With the abolition of the Corn Laws and numerous trade restrictions, he has also improved their situation. For this political goal he got so indebted that political friends solicited donations for him.
Nothing demonstrates Cobden's altruistic idealism like his stance on the war of civilization in the United States. He welcomed the liberation of the slaves , regardless of the fact that the southern states were free-trading and the northern states were protectionist - and that he himself suffered economically as cotton imports from the southern states were now decreasing. Richard Cobden and other Manchester liberals kept Britain out of the war. Cobden raised donations for the workers whose existence depended on American cotton.
Fonts
- England, Ireland and America, by a Manchester Manufacturer. , 1835.
- Russia. , 1836.
- 1793 and 1853 in Three Letters. , 1853.
- How Wars are Got Up in India, The Origin of the Burmese War. , 1853.
- What Next - And Next? 1856.
- The Three Panics, An Historical Episode. , 1862.
- John Bright (Ed.): Speeches on Questions of Public Policy. 2 volumes, JE Thorold Rogers, London 1870.
literature
- Carl Brinkmann (ed.): Richard Cobden and the Manchesterism. Hobbing Verlag, Berlin 1924 ( Klassiker der Politik . 10, ZDB -ID 503311-1 ).
- Anthony Howe, Simon Morgan (Eds.): Rethinking Nineteenth-Century Liberalism. Richard Cobden Bicentenary Essays. Ashgate, Aldershot et al. 2006, ISBN 0-7546-5572-5 .
- Anthony Howe, Simon Morgan (Eds.): The Letters of Richard Cobden . 4 volumes, Oxford 2007–2015.
- John Morley : The Life of Richard Cobden. 2 volumes. Chapman & Hall, London 1881.
- Donald Read: Cobden and Bright. a Victorian Political Partnership . Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd., London 1967.
- Nicholas C. Edsall: Richard Cobden. Independent Radical , Cambridge / London 1986.
Web links
- Literature by and about Richard Cobden in the catalog of the German National Library
- Newspaper article about Richard Cobden in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
- Page about Richard Cobden
- Detmar Doering: The Manchester Myth - An attempt on Richard Cobden and the free trade movement. (PDF file; 265 kB)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Cobden, Richard |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British entrepreneur and politician, member of the House of Commons, representative of the free trade movement |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 3, 1804 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dunford at Heyshott , Chichester , Sussex |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 2, 1865 |
| Place of death | London |