Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots: Free Trade in the Age of Revolution by Tyson Reeder (review)

A new breed of diplomatic historian has entered international waters in recent years. They feed off the bottom, whereas their predecessors focused on the top of the food chain. Instead of stressing the ways in which presidential and monarchical personalities shaped foreign relations, historians such as Brian Rouleau and Tyson Reeder highlight ordinary people, or nonstate actors. Rouleau explores the ways in which nineteenthcentury American mariners created channels through which more formal diplomatic interactions would later follow. Reeder's latest book investigates smugglers and pirates and the transnational exchanges that challenged relations between the United States and Brazil in the wake of the American Revolution.

Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots makes the case that commercial exchanges and economic principles were the twin engines driving foreign policy in the Atlantic World in between the Age of Empires and the Age of Nations. North Americans penetrated British imperial borders and smuggled goods prior to the American Revolution. The British government clamped down on this clandestine trade. Americans revolted and formed an independent republic that promoted free trade. When people living in Brazil created their own liberation movement, Americans expected revolutionaries south of the Equator to follow suit. Americans even went so far as to travel to Brazil to assist in the fight against the Portuguese Empire. They secured letters of marque from Brazilian rebels. These papers usually provided state sanction for capturing vessels and cargo and selling them in prize courts. In this case, however, Americans received letters of marque from an illegitimate source, which made them quasi-pirates. Then, a funny thing happened. Or, at least, it seemed funny to free-trade republicans in North America. The Portuguese government relocated to Rio de Janeiro and deregulated maritime commerce in 1808. Brazilians eschewed grand ideas about a commercial republic in favor of monarchy. Even after Brazil became politically independent from the Portuguese Empire in 1822, Brazilians saw no incongruity between monarchy and free trade. While both the United States and Brazil came to rely on slavery for economic growth, nineteenth-century Americans demeaned Brazilians as being racially incapable of good government. Instead of continuing to try to foster republicanism in South America, US authorities focused more on their nation's reputation among European powers.

This book will mostly appeal to readers interested in international relations. Reeder explains the formation of an American political culture and the breakdown of the British Empire. The dissolution of the Portuguese Empire and Brazilian independence is covered in great detail. And there simply isn't a better book on the involvement of the United States in South American revolutions when it comes to the very early nineteenth century.

Reeder is at his best when he is analyzing grand, hemispheric political shifts. His comparison of the ways in which the British and Portuguese governments handled colonial demands for liberalized trade simultaneously casts revolutionary movements and the rise of the Age of Nations in the shadow of the rise of capitalism. Reeder brilliantly demonstrates that profit-driven free traders reshaped the political climate in the Western Hemisphere.

The broad sweeping portrait of millions of people and multiple continents that Reeder presents pixelates when he zooms in on individuals. For example, there are no real pirates in the book despite the title on the cover. When the caudillo José Gervasio Artigas recruited "pirates" to fight off Portuguese invaders in defense of Brazilian republicanism in 1817, he mobilized these maritime marauders with letters of marque (180). These licenses were legal documents that specified where and when privateers could capture ships flying enemy flags. They also enabled privateers to sell captured ships and cargo after they had been adjudicated as legal prizes in prize courts. These licenses were used throughout Europe and the Americas, and they protected privateers upon capture. Privateers had to be treated as legitimate prisoners of war, no matter what rhetoric enemy government officials used to cast their actions in subhuman light. They could...