To the most distant parts of the Globe: Trade, Politics, and the Maritime Frontier in the Early Republic, 1763-1819

This program explores the changing patterns of American maritime commerce in the Early Republic from the perspective of merchants in Salem, Massachusetts, who were some of the first Americans to trade in the Baltic, India, and China. Lewis’s work investigates the geographic breadth of Salem’s commerce, the process of forming new trading relationships with merchants on the other side of the globe, and how this participation in global commerce affected Salem’s local political debates over the project of constructing a federal union that would make the oceans stable, safe, and profitable for American ships.