Book Reviews
BOOK REVIEWS Peter Andreas. Smuggler Nation: How been mostly forgotten, and that current Illicit Trade Made America. Oxford, UK: efforts to seal the border from smugglers Oxford University Press, www.oup.com, have “been more devoid of historical 2013. xiii+454 pages, illustrations, notes, memory, learning, and reflection” (329). index. US $29.95, cloth; ISBN 978-0-19- 974688-0. The scope is broad, organized chronologically and by commodity: the The New York Times recently reported that colonial era, early republic, westward the history of American capitalism is back, expansion, gilded age, and modern era. and that there is even a new book series on This ambitious approach leaves the book a that subject from Columbia University wide study rather than a deep one, allowing Press. While Smuggler Nation is not a part Andreas to paint the American past with a of that series, it certainly qualifies in its very broad brush indeed. A variety of goods breathless celebration of what it calls are considered, from “pot to porn” as the “contraband capitalism.” Political scientist author states (xi). Molasses, flour, enslaved Peter Andreas boldly proclaims that the Africans, pornography, industrial United States is a “smuggler nation” in this information, European manufactured goods, sweeping narrative of illicit American trade liquor, marijuana, Chinese immigrants, from colonial times to the present. In so cocaine, and Mexican immigrants. What is doing, he joins a long list of those who shocking is just how much of this follow Adam Smith’s feeling about such contraband was “live cargo,” especially traders: “The smuggler is a person who, people destined to do the most grueling though no doubt blamable for violating the labor in the nation.
[Show full text]