So Great a Proffit: How the East Indies Trade Transformed Anglo-American Capitalism (review)

Abstract

So Great a Proffit: How East Trade 'Transformed Anglo-American Capitalism. By James R. Fichter. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Pp. 400. Cloth, $35.00.)Reviewed by Rachel Tamar VanA common critique made of works on early American commerce with Asia is that trade never lived up to hype. Fables of oriental luxuries and millions of consumers belied paucity of actual exchange, leading scholars themselves to overvalue trade's history.If this dismissal ever held weight, James Fichter's impressive new book, So Great a Profst, puts it to rest. In considering impact of American trade in East on Anglo-American capitalism during years 1783 to 1815, Fichter demonstrates that American mercantile activity in Asia contributed to liberalization of British trade and empire at a pivotal moment and generated profits (and hence capital) for a budding class of American industrial entrepreneurs. By shifting emphasis from trade to capital, Fichter makes a distinction with a difference. Scholars too often focus on industrialization as an explanation for North Atlantic political and economic power in nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Focusing on capital, however, places both trade and industry in a larger trajectory of reorganization of finance.In its barest sketches, So Great a Profst tells a familiar story. As Douglass North wrote in 1961, European wars emerging out of French Revolution created an opening for neutral powers - especially Americans - to profit from markets otherwise monopolized by French, British, Dutch, and Spanish. The re-export trade enabled by 1793 to 1815 wars in turn allowed a nascent investor-capital class of merchants to finance American industrialization. The book is thus organized around French Revolutionary Wars: The first two chapters examine American- East Indian trade prior to French Revolution and chapters 3 to 8 during French Wars, with final two chapters turning to consequences of trade for British and American economies in wars' aftermath. In practice, however, this book pushes us beyond North's thesis into new and exciting territory.First, this is a work of breathtaking scope. While historians recognize that early Americans conceptualized the East Indies as a single region, few tackle such a range of international repositories and literatures. Fichter's enviable language skills and historiographical reach manifest repeatedly in nuance with which he handles issues of global scope, such as chapter 6's contention that American trade shored up European colonialism in Batavia, Capetown, Mascarenes, and Manila during French Wars.This scope especially pays off in Fichter's analysis of American trade in Indian Ocean littoral. In 1938, Holden Furber suggested that much-maligned Jay Treaty did better than John Jay himself had ever intended by allowing Americans to operate out of British East India Company ports. Surprisingly, Americanists have been slow to build upon Furber's thesis. Fichter illuminates how Americans used this opportunity combined with their wartime neutrality to play ports off each other. Anywhere Company vessels could go Americans could follow, but many ports that welcomed American neutrals barred British vessels. If British attempted to curtail competitors carrying goods between Bengal and London, Americans stopped off at Danish port of Serampore en route. …