Clashing Over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy (Markets and Governments in Economic History)

by Douglas A. Irwin

Thus, the tumultuous experience of dealing with British trade policies after independence had transformed Thomas Jefferson and his fellow Republicans. In 1785, Jefferson lauded farmers as the chosen people of God and pleaded, “Let our workshops remain in Europe.” In 1813, Jefferson now wrote that “out of the evils of impressment and of the orders in council, a great blessing for us will grow. I have not formerly been an advocate for great manufactories. I doubted whether our labor, employed in agriculture, and aided by the spontaneous energies of the earth, would not procure us more than we could make ourselves of other necessaries. But other considerations entering into the question, have settled my doubts.”142 Three years later, Jefferson was even more enthusiastic: “Within the thirty years that have elapsed [since the publication of Notes on Virginia], how are circumstances changed! To be independent for the comforts of life we must fabricate them ourselves. We must now place the manufacturer by the side of a agriculturalist. . . . . Experience has taught me that manufactures are now as necessary to our independence as to our comfort.”143

I wonder whether Indian independence leaders read about this change in view of Jefferson. For a few decades after independence, India had a similar view of considering agriculture superior to manufacturing