Description: Gautham Rao argues that the origins of the federal government and the modern American state lie in the conflicts over commerce that took place at government customhouses between the American Revolution and the time of Andrew Jackson. The customhouse was where the national government collected the bulk of taxes and put into place market regulations aimed at positioning the US in the global order. At the same time, however, mariners and merchants shaped the implementation and enforcement of laws. The contours of the government emerged from the push-and-pull between these groups, with commercial interests gradually losing power to the rising administrative state.
Brief description: Gautham Rao is assistant professor of history at American University.
Review Quotes: "Brilliantly researched and smartly argued, National Duties deploys prodigious research to construct a social history of governance in the early Republic. Rao gives us a methodological monument that will not be replicated for some time, connecting high fiscal policy to its implementation on the ground, and placing that contingent relationship in the broader social context of mob action and the cultural context of the British fiscal-military state on the one hand, and republican ideology on the other. Besides providing a methodological template for historians interested in governance and the law, regardless of site or time period, Rao's approach yields a major substantive payoff. He argues persuasively that the great centralizer, Alexander Hamilton, was in fact instrumental in replicating a decentralized financial regime and it was Jefferson and Madison, so often portrayed as the protectors of state's rights who shored up the plenary power of the national government."-- "Brian Balogh, University of Virginia"