Just as figures like the Baron de Montesquieu and James Steuart had argued that commerce was sweet and pacifying – in an age when the slave trade was at its peak, and when 'trade in general was still a hazardous, adventurous and often violent business' – the neoliberals of the twentieth century sought to sanitise the capitalism of their time. An unrestricted competitive market, they argued, would replace violent conflicts over territory and resources with peaceful and mutually beneficial commerce. The cause of conflict, they argued, lay elsewhere – in the politicisation of the economy and the confusion between political sovereignty and the ownership of a territory's natural resources.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 256