and without the need to invoke the state to support them with protective
tariffs or territorial annexations. After 1870, however, other countries were
becoming industrialized, notably Germany and the United States, and they
were eroding the economic preeminence on which British global strength
had rested. In an international environment that was strikingly different
from the free-trading Western world of the midcentury, European states
were playing an increasingly active role at home and abroad. Competition
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