Writing with a nervous eye on rising anticolonial movements from India to the Philippines, Mises warned that, if independence damaged the integration of the colonies in global circuits of trade, it would be 'an economic catastrophe of hitherto unprecedented proportion'. Despite his liberal scruples about coercive rule, he believed that political independence was of minor significance compared to the future of an international market civilisation. 'European officials, troops, and police must remain in these areas', he wrote, as far as their presence is necessary in order to maintain the legal and political conditions required to insure the participation of the colonial territories in international trade.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 249