Free Ports in the Liberal Imagination: Evidence from The Economist and The New York Times, 1845–2010

ABSTRACT This essay relies on an extensive database of articles from The Economist and The New York Times to track the contours of free port debate over time. A secondary aim (exploiting this database) is to map more fully the spatial and chronological bounds of the free port. A third, more tentative goal is to gauge how the free port functioned and why it became outmoded by the late twentieth century, as discourse about the free port gave way to a wider array of institutions such as the export processing zone and the special economic zone. Ultimately, we argue that the free port is best seen as a concomitant of Euro-American imperialism, whether viewed from the metropole or the colonies.