Description:
This title is published in Open Access with the support of the University of Helsinki Library.
This book takes a long-run view of the global maritime trade of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia from 1700 to American Independence in 1776. Land argues that the three cities developed large, global networks of maritime commerce and exchange that created tension between merchants and the British Empire which sought to enforce mercantilist policies to constrain American trade to within the British Empire. Colonial merchants created and then expanded their mercantile networks well beyond the confines of the British Empire. This trans-imperial trade (often considered smuggling by British authorities) formed the roots of what became known as the American Revolution.
Brief description: Jeremy Land, Ph.D., (2019), Georgia State University, is currently a postdoctoral researcher in economic history at University of Gothenburg and a visiting researcher at the University of Helsinki. His research focuses on the global maritime economy, war, and state capacity in the early modern era.
Review Quotes: " Colonial Ports offers an accessible overview of eighteenth-century commercial networks in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Nonspecialists and undergraduates will welcome its clear language, argumentation, and historical background, while specialists will gravitate to its exhaustive quantitative analysis and data tables on the contours of this trade. "
---- Grant Kleiser, Columbia University, in: H-Early-America February, 2024
"Land offers a convincing material explanation of the cause of American independence. Tight, well-organized, and quite readable, Land's book presents an argument that is both straightforward and sophisticated. He successfully argues against several prior interpretations of the political economy of eighteenth-century British North America." - Benjamin L. Carp, Brooklyn College, in: EH.Net (September 2023)