Smuggler Nation rocks. It tells the unvarnished story behind the official and the legendary. It answers age-old questions about motives and assumptions. It speaks truth to power. And the truth is ugly.
The United States was born a smuggling nation. John Hancock, whose florid signature sits top and center on the Declaration of Independence, was one of the biggest smugglers of his era. His concern was not taxation without representation; he was was fed up with British attempts to crack down on smuggling. As were many, many others. The Stamp Act wasn't the last straw; writs of assistance permitting Customs inspections was the last straw.
All through the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and the War of 1812, Americans traded freely with both sides. They fed the British army in Canada in 1812 and armed the South in the Civil War. It was all just business as usual in a country renown for its piracy and theft. The US government encouraged theft and smuggling of machinery, which enabled New England to build a worldbeating cloth manufacturing industry, all without paying licensing, royalties or even import fees. British workers were smuggled out of the country to man it all - tens of thousands of them. Foreigners were not allowed to own patents, thus permitting Americans to use the law to ensure lawbreaking.
Andreas traces an entire smuggling circuit from the Caribbean, where Americans picked up molasses to smuggle to their rum refineries, smuggling the rum into Europe, then down to Africa to pick up more slaves for the cane plantations in the Caribbean.
This was the mainstay of the US economy until the revolution. The US did not become the biggest slave importer for itself until after it was outlawed in the early 1800s. If it could be smuggled, it became attractive.
The US was known as the foremost haven for international copyright piracy in the world throughout the 19th century. Why smuggle in a container of books, when you could bring one home and reprint it yourself? Even Dickens complained about the theft, and it wasn't until an American, Mark Twain, protested, that the US became a born-again copyright evangelist. And of course it has since swung to other extreme, extending copyright (The Mickey Mouse Act) for 93 years and policing the planet in search of infringers.
The USA looked very much like what it charges China with today, and this hypocrisy is typical of the cycle at all levels. The grand "old money" of the US - of the Hancocks and the Astors and the like - came from smuggling. They traded with the enemy and they smuggled alcohol to the Indians, and no law was too serious to even give them pause. They had the support of presidents and cabinet secretaries who participated themselves and encouraged it. The sainted Daniel Webster said in their defense: "It is not the practice of nations to undertake to prohibit their own subjects from trafficking in articles contraband of war." Go for it!
Even Lincoln handed out permits to trade cotton with the South, keeping the war going longer. General William Butler somehow increased his net worth from $150,000 to $3 million during the Civil War, as "merchants" gathered round him wherever he went. Franklin Roosevelt's family fortune came from selling opium to the Chinese. Shipbuilders on Long Island built for both the coast guard and rum runners during Prohibition.
I think my favourite story is of the legendary Alamo hero, Jim Bowie. While famous for the Bowie Knife, he made his living smuggling, and he had a great scam. He bought slaves in Spanish-controlled Galveston, then surrendered them to the US Customs authorities. This got them into the USA cleanly, and he could buy them back from the government as simple seized contraband a month later, sheltered and fed. He even got 50% off from the government. ($1 a pound in Galveston, 50 cents a pound in the USA) No muss, very little fuss. And because of honor among thieves, no one bid against you when you went to recover your cargo - or your ship itself.
So when you look at Somalia and its piracy, when you look at China and its copying, know there is excellent precedent in the country that spends billions every year to stamp it out. There is no wrath like the wrath of the reformed. and the USA spends fabulous amounts of taxpayer dollars to stamp out what its founders fought to preserve.
Smuggler Nation is an blockbuster of the first rank. It is breezily written, well referenced and terrifically organized. Most highly recommended.
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