Citizens of Convenience: The Imperial Origins of American Nationhood on the U.S.–Canadian Border by Lawrence B. A. Hatter (review)

Lawrence Hatter's Citizens of Convenience is an essential read for scholars and students in a number of fields, including Atlantic, borderland, business, diplomatic, and Native American history. This work offers a significant contribution to both the historiography of the early American republic and colonial Canada. Furthermore, issues and themes such as border security, collaboration with foreign powers (both real and imagined), and sovereignty resonate in the current highly charged political climate.

Hatter is primarily interested in the period from the end of the American Revolution to the years immediately following the War of 1812. It is an era of ambiguity in terms of both geopolitics and the related questions of international law, citizenship, and cross-border trade. At the center of the narrative is the struggle over the border between the United States and the British colonies of Upper and Lower Canada. Hatter argues the border and its controversies were important factors in shaping the new American nation and its people.

The citizens of convenience in question are a group of Anglo-Canadian fur traders in Montreal who relied on a complex and far-reaching social and economic network, spanning from Niagara to Lake Superior. As the 1783 Treaty of Paris endangered their lucrative commerce by creating a new national boundary, they responded by manipulating the then-fluid concepts of American and British citizenship in ways that benefitted their transnational ventures. Methodologically, Hatter masterfully blends the microhistory of trading firms, their proprietors, and tense border encounters with their full diplomatic and global contexts. Events on the ground at far-flung trading posts, such as Detroit and Michilimackinac, are shown to be both influenced by and important to negotiations in Washington and London, while at the same time being part of larger contests for the Pacific trade and the fate of the American West.

The ambiguities and vulnerabilities of both the United States and colonial Canada are detailed early on. The American-Indian wars provided Canadians with an opportunity to destabilize their southern neighbor and perhaps reconfigure the troublesome border. However, these hopes were dashed when the British at Fort Miami refused to aid confederate warriors who had been routed by U.S. general Anthony Wayne in 1794.

The year 1794 also proved crucial for Canadian merchants as American and British diplomats negotiated what became known as the Jay Treaty, which is handled in considerable detail in the book's third chapter. The treaty, which proved to be a boon for the Montreal traders, enabled those at the western posts to choose their own American or British citizenship, which in turn allowed the fur trade to circumvent bothersome customs and other restrictions. This third chapter is an excellent combination of high diplomacy and frontier intrigue as it details the complex negotiations surrounding the treaty and the actions of traders and others as they maneuvered the new geopolitical landscape that it brought.

Hatter also pays equal attention to the interests of the Americans who sought free trade in the Atlantic and Caribbean while trying to secure the fur trade in the West. These seemingly contradictory and hypocritical aims are argued to actually be a rational and utilitarian way of thinking that sought to place the country on equal footing with its European competitors while securing its vulnerable sovereignty. The citizen of convenience's chief rival on the ground proved to be American customs agents and other border officials who proved to be just as innovative as they too creatively interpreted national and international law to justify blocking and seizing fur convoys.

The final two chapters of the book deal with events surrounding the War of 1812. The author asserts that borders for both the British and Americans became popular concerns. Montreal merchants employed pamphleteers to pressure the British government to undo the 1784 settlement, while...