The Anglo-Belgian Treaty of Commerce and Navigation was a
free trade agreement
A free-trade agreement (FTA) or treaty is an agreement according to international law to form a free-trade area between the cooperating states. There are two types of trade agreements: bilateral and multilateral. Bilateral trade agreements occur ...
between the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was a sovereign state in the British Isles that existed between 1801 and 1922, when it included all of Ireland. It was established by the Acts of Union 1800, which merged the Kingdom of Great B ...
and the
Kingdom of Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to the ...
, signed on 23 July 1862.
It was the first such treaty that rather than being time-limited and requiring renewal, contained an open-ended stipulation for withdrawal (technically known as "denunciation") that became a regular feature of later treaties of commerce (article 25):
[Augustus Oakes and R.B. Mowat, ''The Great European Treaties of the Nineteenth Century'' (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1918), pp. 8-9]
On Internet Archive
Prime Minister Salisbury gave notification of the United Kingdom's intention to withdraw from the treaty on 28 July 1897, because a clause providing that Belgian goods be admitted to British colonies on the same footing as British goods was contrary to the new policy of
Imperial Preference
Imperial Preference was a system of mutual tariff reduction enacted throughout the British Empire following the Ottawa Conference of 1932. As Commonwealth Preference, the proposal was later revived in regard to the members of the Commonwealth of N ...
. This British "denunciation" was published in the ''
Moniteur Belge'' of 1 August 1897.
See also
*
Cobden–Chevalier Treaty
The Cobden–Chevalier Treaty was an Anglo-French free trade agreement signed between Great Britain and France on 23 January 1860. After Britain began free trade policies in 1846, there remained tariffs with France. The 1860 treaty ended tariffs o ...
*
Free trade agreements of the United Kingdom
Following its withdrawal from the European Union on 31 January 2020, the United Kingdom began negotiations on several free trade agreements to remove or reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade, both to establish new agreements and to rep ...
References
Treaties of the United Kingdom (1801–1922)
History of international trade
1862 in Belgium
1862 in the United Kingdom
1862 treaties
Free trade agreements of the United Kingdom
July 1862 events
Treaties of Belgium
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
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