Contraband: Smuggling and the Birth of the American Century

Cohen, a professor of history at Syracuse University, investigates the conflicted American relationship with smuggling, the center of a bitter debate between free trade vs. protectionism/high tariffs. His overwhelming focus is the Gilded Age (roughly 1865–1898), and he shows how smuggling and undervaluing imported goods was a widespread form of tax cheating in this era before income tax. Cohen introduces readers to a host of colorful characters, particularly Charley Lawrence, a notable smuggler and friend of Boss Tweed. Cohen illuminates the murky world of customs houses and inspectors, which pre-WWI “exceed[ed] the navy in size and might,” and underscores the cultural context of high tariffs on luxury and other items, illustrating how they came to be seen as promoting such values as social equality, economic independence, and “American exceptionalism.” Conversely, smuggling was often “associated with foreigners, Jews, Asians, and women,” though it was also a “ ‘respectable crime’ committed by upper-class whites.” Despite a chapter on late 19th century American imperialism, which covers not contraband but the annexation of Hawaii and the Spanish-American War, he fails to show how smuggling inaugurated “the American century.” Still, this is a well-researched and well-written account of the underside of America’s growth as an economic power. [em](Aug.) [/em]