"The Imperialism of Free Trade" is an academic article by John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson first published in The Economic History Review in 1953.
As well as reigniting scholarly interest in theorizing New Imperialism, the article helped launch the Cambridge School of historiography.
The strategic model and its relevance to East Africa was criticised for its limited documentary basis and sequential inconsistencies by John Darwin in 1997,[3] a refutation that was further consolidated and contextualised by Jonas Gjersø in 2015.
[4] Reviewing the debate from the end of the 20th century, historian Martin Lynn argues that Gallagher and Robinson exaggerated its impact.
[5]The idea that free-trade imperial states use informal methods to secure their expanding economic influence has attracted Marxist historiographers to use the theory to describe how the modern economic policies of the United States and the imperialist policies of Great Britain are essentially the same, in both motive and method.