Editing History of the United Kingdom (section)

====Free trade imperialism====
[[File:Kemna Lokomotiven.jpg|thumb|Many European companies, such as steam-machine producer [[Kemna Bau|J. Kemna]], modeled themselves on English industry.]]

The Great London Exhibition of 1851 clearly demonstrated Britain's dominance in engineering and industry; that lasted until the rise of the United States and Germany in the 1890s. Using the imperial tools of free trade and financial investment,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Semmel |first=Bernard |title=The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism |date=1970 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |chapter=Chapter 1 |author-link=Bernard Semmel}}</ref> it exerted major influence on many countries outside Europe, especially in Latin America and Asia. Thus Britain had both a formal Empire based on British rule and an informal one based on the British pound.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=McLean |first=David |author-link=David McLean (historian) |date=1976 |title=Finance and 'Informal Empire' before the First World War |journal=Economic History Review |volume=29 |issue=2 |pages=291–305 |doi=10.2307/2594316 |jstor=2594316}}</ref>