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  • Borderland Smuggling: Patriots, Loyalists, and Illicit Trade in the Northeast, 1783–1820
  • David R. Facey-Crowther
Borderland Smuggling: Patriots, Loyalists, and Illicit Trade in the Northeast, 1783–1820. By Joshua M. Smith. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006. ISBN 0-8130-2986-4. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xv, 160. $55.00.

This short but important work examines the role of smuggling as a social force within border communities, using the Passamaquoddy region between Maine and New Brunswick as an example. The smuggling trade was largely the result of the struggle between American demands for liberalized trade and British mercantilism. As Smith argues, smuggling not only deprived the state of revenue but also challenged its claim to exert control over its borders. Government authorities on both sides of the border tried to eliminate smuggling but their efforts were frustrated by the craftiness of the smugglers, the rampant corruption of officials, and the continuing importance of this underground economy to coastal communities. Whether Patriot or Loyalist in origin these border communities shared a common view that smuggling was an essential adjunct to a frontier economy based mainly on fishing and farming. Smuggling not only brought in much needed income, it also provided those essential provisions denied by trade regulations. It also engaged all walks of life, even at the highest levels of society in colonial New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The high point of borderland smuggling came during the first two decades of the nineteenth century when it was dominated by the illicit plaster trade between New Brunswick and the American Northeast. So pervasive and prosperous was that trade that it turned Passamaquoddy [End Page 524] Bay into an international smuggling entrepôt and a haven for free traders. Smuggling eventually declined with the lessening of trade restrictions, the shift toward free trade by Great Britain, and the emergence of strong alternative economies in the region. Only then were governments able to exert effective control over their borders.

Smith has based his study on exhaustive research in British, American, and Canadian archives. The result is an authoritative and convincing portrayal of how border formation and customs enforcement affected local populations. Smith's study also offers unusual insights into community life in the early decades of settlement. He has managed to bring to life the dynamics of these early settlement communities on the Maine–New Brunswick border and to show how their lives and livelihoods were impinged upon by developments and policies well beyond their reach and control.

Smith's work has broken new ground in this case study of border formation in a rather remote part of the Atlantic world. But, as he points out, Passamaquoddy, in its heyday, was in fact one of the great smuggling centers of that Atlantic world. Smith's study therefore has relevance beyond its regional focus. What he tells us about border formation, government control and seaborne trade is important both to regional studies as well as to the history of relations between the United States and Great Britain in these turbulent years.

This well-written study will find a ready readership among historians of the Atlantic region and with those with a general interest in the history of the North East and of Canada's Atlantic provinces.

David R. Facey-Crowther
Emeritus, Memorial University
St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada
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