Interview with the author of a new book on the role of smuggling in the rise of American capitalism.
Q: Certainly, one of the longstanding sub-themes of the slavery issue is that the North benefitted from the agricultural output of the slave states, particularly cotton that was utilized in manufacturing textiles in New England. You go one step further and talk about how various components of the illegal slave trafficking industry (after federal law outlawed bringing new slaves to the United States prior to the end of slavery itself) were vastly profitable to many individuals and industries in the North. Can you expand on that? A: The North was complicit in all sorts of ways in the illicit slave trade. And it is important to emphasize that this was especially true in terms of outfitting slave ships for the transatlantic slave trade supplying the vast plantations in Brazil and Cuba. In the mid-19th century, New York City was one of the world's leading ports for this. Many of the slave ships were also made in America and flew the American flag. American merchants were banned (by federal law) from participating in this international flesh trade, but this didn't stop them. Q: That, of course, brings us to the man that the renowned university at which you teach was named after - [John] Brown University. Obviously, he was not the abolitionist (with whom he shares a name), since he was a prominent slave trader. He was a colleague of another even more active illegal slave trafficking family: the DeWolfs. A descendant of the DeWolf family made a documentary, Traces of the Trade: A Story From the Deep North, in 2008 that included the claim that Rhode Island was the leading slave trading state in the union, due to smuggling. Can you elaborate? A: The extent of the Rhode Island and Brown connection in various illicit trades was one of the big surprises for me in researching the book. I had no idea that this tiny place and the founders of my university played such an important role in the nation's early illicit economic history. The slave trade was more of a side business for John Brown, but he gained extra notoriety because he was such an outspoken defender of the trade at a time when it was being outlawed. He also went to great lengths to facilitate and protect the slave trafficking interests of the DeWolf family in nearby Bristol, Rhode Island, which was especially involved in the trade in the first decades of the 19th century. What is interesting is that Rhode Island was a leading advocate for abolishing the slave trade while at the same time a leading evader of the early anti-slave trade laws. John Brown's brother, Moses, was one of the other founders of Brown University - and a leading abolitionist. The two of them were constantly arguing and feuding over the slave trade issue. Indeed, John Brown was one of the first violators of the anti-slave trade law that Moses Brown had successfully lobbied to pass. full: http://www.truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/25273-smuggling-and-illicit-trade-have-always-been-an-essential-component-of-the-us-economy _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
