Borderland Smuggling: Patriots, Loyalists, and Illicit Trade in the Northeast, 1783-1820

New Perspectives on Maritime History and Nautical Archaeology

by Joshua M. Smith

Passamaquoddy Bay lies between Maine and New Brunswick at the mouth of the St. Croix River. Most of it (including Campobello Island) is within Canada, but the Maine town of Lubec lies at the bay's entrance. Rich in beaver pelts, fish, and timber, the area was a famous smuggling center after the American Revolution. Joshua Smith examines the reasons for smuggling in this area and how three conflicts in early republic history--the 1809 Flour War, the War of 1812, and the 1820 Plaster War--reveal smuggling's relationship to crime, borderlands, and the transition from mercantilism to capitalism. Smith astutely interprets smuggling as created and provoked by government efforts to maintain and regulate borders. In 1793 British and American negotiators framed a vague new boundary meant to demarcate the lingering British empire in North America (Canada) from the new American Republic. Officials insisted that an abstract line now divided local peoples on either side of Passamaquoddy Bay. Merely by persisting in trade across the newly demarcated national boundary, people violated the new laws. As smugglers, they defied both the British and American efforts to restrict and regulate commerce. Consequently, local resistance and national authorities engaged in a continuous battle for four decades. Smith treats the Passamaquoddy Bay smuggling as more than a local episode of antiquarian interest. Indeed, he crafts a local case study to illuminate a widespread phenomenon in early modern Europe and the Americas.

192 pages, Hardcover

First published August 29, 2006

About the author

Joshua M. Smith is Associate Professor of Humanities at the United States Merchant Marine Academy. He earned an AS from Maine Maritime Academy, an MA in history from University of St. Andrews in Scotland, an MA in Maritime History & Underwater Archaeology from East Carolina University and a Ph.D. from University of Maine.

Reviews

[Grub Street Hack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joshua Smith presents the reader of a microhistory of the region of Passamaquoddy, which sits on the border of Maine and Canada. Passamaquoddy is an example of a littoral society, as residents on both sides of the border shared bonds along family, trade, and a shared culture. Borderland Smuggling centers on the illicit trade that took place in and around Passamaquoddy between British subjects and Americans. “Passamaquoddy was truly a smuggler’s haven. Not only did locals tolerate illicit trade but they turned out in crowd actions to defend it, grabbing whatever weapons were on hand.... When pushed, borderland residents proved very capable of joining together against state intervention into their livelihoods” (108). He presents the smugglers as people merely responding to unjust laws. Smith also rejects the notion of associating smugglers with the “proletarian struggle against the standing order” as described by E.P. Thompson. Although smugglers did participate in community forms of protest, they also collaborated with the rising middle class and engaged in commercial enterprise. In other words, they were capitalists, not socialists. To that end, Smith ties smuggling to ideas of free trade, even citing Adam Smith’s support for the action. Smith also argues that the presence of smugglers from distant ports indicated that smuggling was not merely local, but a larger phenomenon that included the entire Atlantic. In brief, Passamaquoddy indicates the importance on how US and Canadian history are intertwined. Methodologically, you might describe this as an “entangled history” (to borrow from Gould). British and US laws, regulations, and enforcement influenced both sides of the border. “American and colonial economies remained intertwined after the Revolution, for capitalism tends to ignore borders” (118).