Bootleggers and Borders: The Paradox of Prohibition on a Canada—U.S. Borderland by Stephen T. Moore (review)

With the growing popularity of borderlands history, scholars have devoted considerable attention to the areas adjacent to the U.S.-Mexico boundary. Yet the other North American border—the line separating Canada and the United States—has been neglected. Moore has begun to redress the balance.

Focusing on the Pacific Northwest, Moore examines the impact of Prohibition on the two countries. Canadian provinces began to abandon Prohibition in 1919, the same year in which the United States amended the Constitution to adopt national Prohibition. Americans flooded northward to drink, and bootleggers (mostly Americans) began smuggling alcohol southward across the border. Both the Canadian government and the public saw no reason to stop selling liquor to Americans. In fact, the Canadian government profited from the smuggling, collecting a duty of $20.00 per case of alcohol headed for the United States.

It was impossible to stop the smugglers. Ottawa was reluctant to help Washington enforce its own laws. As much as half of the population in the Pacific Northwest was opposed to Prohibition, including many police officers who were reluctant to enforce the law. U.S. Prohibition agents were too few in number to patrol the borderlands effectively. Although Canada banned the export of alcohol to the United States in 1930, the smuggling continued.

The book’s strengths are many. Moore’s analysis proceeds on more than one level: He examines both relations between Ottawa and Washington and the ways in which Prohibition worked on the ground. He explores the different meanings that Canadians and Americans attached to the border. He understands that the Canada-U.S. boundary was permeable—that people, products, and ideas moved easily across it. This insight sets the book apart from earlier works on the subject, most of which look at one country, as if the forces of history stopped at the 49th parallel. In contrast, Moore shows the close ties between the temperance movements of Canada and of the United States. He demonstrates that British Columbia served as a model for liquor regulation when the United States decided to abandon Prohibition in the early 1930s.

Moore is sensitive to nuance and diversity, refusing to see Canada and the United States as monoliths. He believes that both British Columbians and Washingtonians had more in common with their cross-border neighbors than with others in their own country. This regional identity shaped the nature of Canada-U.S. relations along the western bounary. British Columbians, for instance, were more inclined than other Canadians to cooperate with the United States.

This exhaustively researched book integrates borderlands, international, social, and political history, providing countless insights about Canada and the United States. It is a model of research on the subject of U.S.-Canada relations.