An ‘anti-Catholicism of free trade?’ Religion and the Anglo-Italian negotiations of 1863

Abstract

This article focuses on the 1863 Anglo-Italian Commercial Treaty as a case study for a wider analysis of the relations between the newly unified Italy and Britain. The importance of this treaty lies chiefly in its peculiarity, mainly due to the fact that the British proposed the inclusion of a religious clause in its text. This clause was meant to protect Protestant missionaries operating in rural parts of Italy, where religious intolerance was still frequent. The resulting confrontation showed the extent to which lack of communication between the Board of Trade and the Foreign Office hampered the pursuit of British policy aims, reflecting the then fashionable combination of free trade and Protestantism to promote a form of ‘anglicized globalization’ in Southern Europe. This resulted in the frustration of British commercial interests as defined by the Chambers of Commerce. The present article throws new light on the multi-layered nature of the British engagement with Italy, which involved different economic and religious pressure groups, and confirms Peter Marsh’s thesis about the inadequacy of the British commercial approach to continental Europe in the age of free trade.