Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America

By Peter Andreas

America is a smuggler nation. Our long history of illicit imports has ranged from West Indies molasses and Dutch gunpowder in the 18th century, to British industrial technologies and African slaves in the 19th century, to French condoms and Canadian booze in the early 20th century, to Mexican workers and Colombian cocaine in the modern era. Contraband, it turns out, has been an integral part of American capitalism.<span class='showMoreLessContentElement' style='display: none;'> Far from being a new and unprecedented danger to America, the illicit underside of globalization is actually an old American tradition. As the author shows, it goes back not just years but centuries. And its impact has been decidedly double-edged, not only subverting but also empowering America.

Far from being a new and unprecedented danger to America, the illicit underside of globalization is actually an old American tradition. As Andreas shows, it goes back not just years but centuries. And its impact has been decidedly double-edged, not only subverting but also empowering America

New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 472p.