The Overseas Trade of British America: A Narrative History
Thomas M. Truxes (New Haven, 2021)
The Overseas Trade of British America: A Narrative History is a comprehensive account of the emergence of the United States from the perspective of trade. The most significant feature of colonial trade is its intimate links to chattel slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. Virtually every aspect of colonial commerce bore some connection—direct or indirect. This book is an account of opportunity-seeking, risk-taking producers, merchants, and mariners converting the potential of the New World into individual livelihoods and national wealth. The history of colonial trade is part of something much larger: the creation of the modern global economy.
Excerpt From CHAPTER ONE: “Tudor Beginnings, 1484–1603”
“The overseas trade of British America grew from a seed planted in Tudor England, a remote kingdom on the western fringe of Europe. ‘Before we were a trading people,’ wrote a Londoner in 1747, England ‘lived in a kind of penury, a stranger to money or affluence, inconsiderable in ourselves, and of no consequence to our neighbors.’ For centuries, England had been tormented by political instability, foreign wars, and a death-dealing plague that sapped the vitality of the nation. It was in 1485, under Henry VII, the first of the five Tudor monarchs, that the realm began to regain political cohesion it had not known since before the Black Death decimated western Europe in the mid-fourteenth century. Under his watchful eye, reforms took hold that laid the foundation of the modern state.”
What People Are Saying
“A dazzling tour de force of erudition and empirical heft. This is an indispensable and extraordinary work, immediately the authority in the field.”
— Trevor Burnard, University of Hull
“We could have no better guide than Truxes explaining incisively how American colonial merchants enriched their communities through licit and illicit trade, and how this enrichment was the product of slavery and the slave trade.”
— Nicholas Canny, author of Imagining Ireland’s Pasts
"Truxes demonstrates that trade was the essential element in the success of Britain's American colonies—and of their revolution. He weaves together contemporary opinion and modern analysis in highly readable prose, always with the telling detail."
— Karen Ordahl Kupperman, author of Pocahontas and the English Boys
“Sailing across four centuries and comprehending multiple perspectives, Truxes offers us a fascinating new understanding of a complex development that subjugated black laborers, strengthened white enterprisers and inhabitants, and ultimately facilitated an uneasy independence.”
— David Hancock, The University of Michigan