Commercial Empire Research Articles

E-Commerce and Live Stream Slip-Ups: Sic Transit Gloria Italian Top Influencer Chiara Ferragni. Uncovering New Attitudes in both Consumer Behavior and Brand Strategies

For those unacquainted with Latin brocards, the title alludes to the downfall of the Italian influencer Chiara Ferragni, currently embroiled in a significant scandal. In contemporary times, numerous international brands resort to influencers to endorse and bolster the sales of their products. Among the various prominent figures, such as footballers, singers, and actors, the 36-year-old Chiara Ferragni distinctly stands out as one of the most renowned fashion bloggers, a designated celebrity, and an influential opinion leader on the global stage. In a span of just a few years, Ferragni successfully established an extensive economic and commercial empire, facilitating the launch and sale of products bearing her name. Moreover, she became a pivotal figure for numerous luxury companies, leveraging her media influence to enhance their profitability, constituting the foundational underpinning of social influencer marketing. Over time, Ferragni endorsed a myriad of products from renowned brands, spanning clothing, female beauty accessories, and food products, amassing a current fortune of 45 million euros. However, on December 15, 2023, the Italian Antitrust Authority (AGCM) imposed a fine of over 1 million euros on Ferragni for deceptive advertising practices and consumer deception. According to the AGCM, the influencer omitted pertinent information in her online advertisements, disseminated false information, and employed forms of undue influence. Subsequently, Ferragni also faced suspicions of alleged criminal fraud. This qualitative research paper aims to explore the ongoing investigations, Ferragni’s defense strategies, and the reactions of her followers and clients. The findings reveal a trend where numerous significant brands are severing ties with Ferragni as sponsors, leading to an erosion of consumer trust in the influencer category, and prompting a shift towards a more discerning consumer attitude.

Market integration, empire and industry in the colonial economic development of the Buenos Aires meat industry (1770s–1800s)

ABSTRACT Building on recent literature on the history of political economy and Spanish imperial history, the article reconstructs the ideas that supported the colonial development of the meat industry in the Río de la Plata. Archival and printed sources are employed to illustrate the different arguments revolving around colonial economic development and imperial rule, in the words and practices of merchants, explorers, administrators and ministers. This way, it is possible to disclose the multiple imperial visions circulating in the Spanish Atlantic. The analysis suggests that economic reformism was not only a European intellectual and political movement but was shared and appropriated by Spanish Americans. They employed arguments in political economy to foster their agenda, namely the economic improvement of their territory in the broader context of the Spanish commercial empire. If a shared consensus around imperial political economy between Spanish and Spanish American vassals provided arguments supporting this colonial industry, the diverging economic interests, imperial rivalries, and the different geographical spaces of enunciation determined a variable dialectic between projects for the expansion of salted meat production and their realisation.

Emulating Empires: Caribbean Free Ports, Economic Dualism, and European Imperial Rivalry, c. 1670s–1760s

ABSTRACTWhen the Dutch West Indies Company (WIC) established the free port of Willemstad, Curaçao after 1674, they launched a model for economic competition that other European empires would emulate. Within a century, the Danish, Spanish, British, and French all established their own Caribbean free ports. Emulation, however, was not replication. This article argues that while the expansion of free ports into different Caribbean empires generated similar forms of economic dualism (prohibitive commercial systems in certain locales with more-open ones in others), they all served varying purposes. The Dutch and Danish maintained or expanded their free-port systems and utilised strategic neutrality to remain active players within an increasingly competitive economic arena. Britain wanted to extend its commercial empire by making foreign realms dependent on its trade. France sought to pacify recalcitrant planters desperate for reliable provisioning. Finally, Spain enacted free ports in Santo Domingo to supply and encourage settlement in a region threatened by French encroachments. Thus, although these empires all established free ports in strategic locales and jealously emulated each other, they did so with unique political-economic aims in mind. Meanwhile, merchants, enslaved Africans, sailors, settlers, and European intellectuals employed Caribbean free ports to accomplish their own ends as well.

John Leyden’s Translation of the ‘Malay Annals’

Scottish involvement in the British empire has been attributed to political anxiety at home and commercial freedom abroad. Central to this premise has been the influence of the Scottish enlightenment in illuminating the path forward for Scottish merchants and mercenaries. An exception pertained to the Scottish planners of the British East India Company’s invasion of Java in 1811. Tasked to liberate the East Indies from the Franco-Dutch power, they sought to replace a commercial empire with an independent Malay commonwealth. The means, besides arms and legislation, included an intellectual initiative by John Leyden to recover the native consciousness of the people of the Malay Archipelago and spark their belief in Malay nationhood. It involved a linguistic scheme to revive Malay speech by combining the region’s literary forms, modes and media into a single historical text in the Malay language. The enterprise was, I argue, founded on the Scottish belief that human volition was innate to the native character.

Dealing in Debt: The Role of Credit in Early Sino–U.S. Trade

This essay explores the development of Sino–U.S. commercial and arbitration practices that grew out of credit transactions and operated in relation to, but distinct from, the greater Canton system that primarily served Beijing and London. Without dismissing the importance of silver and Pacific trade goods to early Sino–U.S. trade, this essay traces the financializing trade practices and emerging regulatory strategies that rose alongside the traffic in specie and commodities. Chinese merchants who traded with foreigners at Canton became increasingly eager for U.S. specie payments as China’s imperial policies as well as Britain- and India-based traders siphoned silver away from Canton. The eagerness for American specie remittances coupled with the relationships cultivated by resident American agents like John Perkins Cushing led Chinese merchants to increasingly trade with Americans on credit. Credit transactions facilitated the expansion of Sino–U.S. trade, the movement of opium, and the entry of Chinese merchants into Atlantic commodity and capital markets. Credit transactions also presented the problem of how to enforce payment and collect bad debts. Whenever the informal personal networks they had forged to secure credit relationships proved insufficient, merchants on both sides of the globe looked to U.S. legal institutions to mediate commercial disputes. Thus, even as the silver U.S. traders supplied in Canton worked to integrate Americans more firmly into Britain’s commercial empire in Asia, credit transactions and formal and informal dispute resolutions arising therefrom carved out separate avenues of direct Sino–U.S. exchange that were of mutual interest.

‘A sufficient and adequate squadron’: The navy, the transatlantic slave trade, and the American commercial empire

From its creation, the Africa Squadron, although tasked with suppressing the slave trade, did more to defend American sovereignty and expand American commercial access along the west coast of Africa. In both of these regards, Great Britain and the British Navy were the most prominent obstacles in the way of the United States achieving its goals. These tasks were among the most important imperatives that drove American foreign relations during the antebellum era. Thus the Africa Squadron is best understood as a case study of the vital role the navy played in not just conducting but also shaping American diplomacy. This article examines the circumstances surrounding the creation of the Africa Squadron, concluding that the flotilla was less concerned with actually ending the transatlantic trade in humans than with serving as a check on British power at sea.

An Empire of Free Ports: British Commercial Imperialism in the 1766 Free Port Act

AbstractThe Free Port Act of 1766 was an important reform in British political economy during the so-called imperial crisis between the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) and the American Revolution (1775–1783). In an explicit break from the letter if not the spirit of the Navigation Acts, the act opened six British ports in the West Indies (two in Dominica and four in Jamaica) to foreign merchants trading in a highly regulated number of goods subject to various duties. Largely understudied, this legislation has been characterized in most previous work on the subject as a fundamental break from British mercantile policies and meant to benefit North American colonial merchants. This article proposes a different interpretation. Based on the wider context of other imperial free port models, the loss of conquests such as French Guadeloupe and Martinique and Spanish Havana in the 1763 Paris Peace Treaty, a postwar downturn in Anglo-Spanish trade, and convincing testimonies by merchants and colonial observers, policy makers in London conceived of free ports primarily as a means of extending Britain's commercial empire. The free port system was designed to ruin the rival Dutch trade economically and shackle Spanish and French colonists to Britain's mercantile, manufacturing, and slaving economies. The reform marks a key moment in the evolution of British free trade imperial designs that became prevalent in the nineteenth century and beyond.

Lived Experience, Loyalties, and Lost Histories of the American Revolution

Lived Experience, Loyalties, and Lost Histories of the American Revolution Lauren Duval (bio) Donald F. Johnson, Occupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of Revolution. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. Illustrations, notes, and index. 256 pp. $34.95. Donald F. Johnson, Occupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of Revolution. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. Illustrations, notes, and index. 256 pp. $34.95. Reflecting on the American Revolution in the early nineteenth century, John Adams famously declared that the Revolution occurred "in the minds and hearts of the people" long "before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington."1 In subsequent centuries, historians have parsed these triumphal sentiments to reveal the extended, contingent, and varied means by which Americans dissolved their ties to Britain.2 In his ambitious new book, Occupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of Occupation, Donald Johnson joins this flourishing conversation by considering how this ideological transformation emerged—contrary to Adams's assertion—from the military conflict itself. Focusing on the six cities occupied by the British army during the war—Boston, New York, Newport, Philadelphia, Savannah, and Charleston—Johnson examines how diverse civilians adapted to and survived the experience of British military rule. Urban ports were political and economic centers—"nodes" of Britain's "commercial empire" (p. 12)—that had an outsized influence on American economies and politics in the revolutionary era.3 During the imperial crises of the 1760s and 1770s, these cities were centers of revolutionary protest; urban street theater, crowd action, and consumer boycotts punctuate the timeline of a mounting imperial crisis. But cities were also, as Johnson reminds us, sites of war that ensnared thousands of Americans in periods of immediate and extended violence. Living under martial law for periods ranging from 9 months to 7 years, urban inhabitants experienced the American Revolution in ways that were at once quotidian and deeply disorienting. Some people prospered during British occupation, but many others endured hunger, economic hardship, violence, social upheaval, and increased precarity. These worsening conditions, Johnson argues, contributed to ordinary Americans' disillusionment with the Crown and gradually transformed the inhabitants of occupied cities into reluctant revolutionaries who "no longer [End Page 521] saw restored royal rule as a viable option" (p. 6). Responding pragmatically rather than ideologically to the challenges of life in occupied cities, ordinary Americans reshaped their relationship to Britain in small, casual ways—one day at a time, with "a profound effect on both the American Revolution and the new world that it produced" (p. 7). Put another way, Johnson suggests that the lived experience of military rule cleaved an uncomfortable disjuncture between hearts and minds, between longstanding loyalty to the Crown and the pressing needs of daily life. Occupied America reorients our perspective on the American Revolution away from the familiar vantages of Valley Forge, Yorktown, or Independence Hall to focus on the everyday experiences of people living under British military rule. Some of these names are familiar: Quaker diarist Elizabeth Drinker, Philadelphia merchant Tench Coxe, New York poet Hannah Lawrence Schieffelin, and self-emancipated Carolina carpenter Boston King. Others are less so, such as Quaker physician William Tillinghast, who thrived during the British occupation of Newport and whose experiences epitomize the contradictory and messy ways that Americans endured the Revolution. Like many American colonists, Tillinghast had connections to both sides of the war. He socialized with British officers, even as the army displaced Newport's Quakers from their meeting house. He tended to British troops but also ministered to Continental prisoners. Local women of varying political persuasions and occupations, including sex workers, passed through his care. A religious pacifist, Tillinghast leaned loyalist, but his kinsman was confined aboard a prison ship for refusing to swear allegiance to the Crown. Tillinghast became disillusioned with the British cause over the course of Newport's three-year occupation, and ultimately, he rejoiced at troops' withdrawal. The Revolution, when viewed from William Tillinghast's perspective, looks less straightforward and more perplexing. Centering the voices of ordinary people like Tillinghast, Johnson persuasively demonstrates that for many people, the turn away from Britain proceeded slowly, forged in daily experiences and fraught with "ambiguities and contradictions" (p...

The Lives of Merchant Capital: The Frères Monneron and the Legacy of Old Regime Empire

Abstract This article scrutinizes the nineteenth-century legacy of the old regime’s commercial empire through the ambiguous case of the Monneron brothers. Having gained fortune and recognition in Indian Ocean trade, the brothers sat as deputies in the National Assembly, but by the end of the 1790s their affairs and reputations had been destroyed. Their experiences reveal how the politics of commerce fundamentally changed during the Revolution. But the Monnerons also draw our attention to structural developments in French commercial imperialism that preceded and transcended the Revolution. They helped facilitate French investment in the Indian Ocean in the final decades of the old regime, a ‘spatial fix’ in merchant capital that was carried out in anticipation of crisis in the Atlantic, and that was consolidated around the turn of the century through the introduction of sugar cultivation in the Mascarene islands. By reading the biographies of the Monnerons alongside the life of their capital, this article attempts to acknowledge the undeniable ruptures of revolutionary politics without losing sight of broader developments in the global history of capitalism.

Femvertising, igualdad de género y el efecto de la tercera persona en las mujeres trabajadoras de Gamarra

Este estudio analiza la femvertising, la reciente estrategia publicitaria que emite mensajes de empoderamiento a la mujer e igualdad de género, y su relación con el efecto de la tercera persona, que indica que las personas tienden a percibir a los demás (ellos) como más influenciados por los medios de comunicación que sí mismos (yo). Se adoptó una metodología cualitativa para analizar la campaña del BCP llamada «#NoMeDigasFelizDía» lanzada en el Día Internacional de la Mujer (2019). Se realizaron entrevistas semiestructuradas a 15 mujeres trabajadoras del emporio de Gamarra (Perú) entre 25 a 52 años. La femvertising ayuda a desarrollar la igualdad de género en las mujeres del imperio comercial textil de Gamarra a través de mensajes a favor de las mujeres, porque muestran formas de empoderamiento de las mujeres, eliminando los roles y estereotipos de género tradicionales, pero que no necesariamente se dan por el efecto de la tercera persona.

The importance of some Red Sea ports and cities for the Portuguese through the journey of the Portuguese man Duarte Barbosa in 972 A.H./ 1565 A.D.

The beginning of the 15th century A.D. is regarded as the start of geographical discoveries movement , the actual beginning of the colonial movement of the cities of the Islamic world which was led by Portugal , and then by the papacy. Although the Mamluk State was entering its final throes, it tried to protect the holy places in Makkah Al-Mukarramah and Al-Madinah Al-Munawwarah by preventing the Portuguese ships from entering the Red Sea, but the Portuguese ships were navigating in the Red Sea for their economic interests, and their pursuit of their desired purpose, which was the revenge on Muslims and invading their holy cities. The research will highlight the dangers of the Portuguese invasion during this period on the Red Sea coasts , the purpose of Duarte Barbosa journey in 972 A.H./1565 A.D. , and the report that Duarte Barbosa wrote about some important cities and coasts of the Red Sea for the Portuguese, and the importance of these cities for them. All of these reports were sent to the Royal Library in Lisboa, which was the headquarters of the Maritime and Commercial Empire. This journey text was written in the Portuguese language, and it was lost for a long time until it was obtained by Dr. Sultan Mohammed Al-Qassimi in 1433 A.H./ 2012 A.D. , and it was translated and directed by him in a huge manuscript, which is considered as the oldest manuscript containing much information about the Arabian Peninsula and the Islamic coasts. Moreover, this manuscript represents the beginning of Portuguese colonization over Islamic monarchies. The researcher.

INFLUENCIA DE LA AUDITORÍA CONTABLE INTERNA EN LAS FINANZAS DE LAS EMPRESAS TEXTILES DEL EMPORIO COMERCIAL DE GAMARRA EN EL PERÚ

El objetivo de la investigación fuedeterminar la influencia de la auditoría contableinterna en las finanzas de las empresas textilesdel emporio comercial de Gamarra ubicado enel distrito de La Victoria en el departamento deLima, capital del Perú. El estudio fue de tipobásico, nivel descriptivo y diseño correlacionalcausal. Para medir y luego correlacionarambas variables, se aplicó un cuestionario deencuesta a una muestra de 132 contadores,administradores y empresarios que están acargo de la dirección de 12 empresas textilesque ofertan sus productos en el emporiocomercial de Gamarra. La revisión de laliteratura científica incluyó el análisis de lasNormas Internacionales de Auditoría (NIAS), lasNormas de Auditoría Generalmente Aceptadas(NAGAS) y las Normas Internacionales parael Ejercicio de la Auditoría Interna (IIA). Elcoeficiente de correlación r fue de 0.94, mientrasque el coeficiente de determinación R2 fue de0.88. Según estas cifras, la auditoría contableinterna explica el 88% de las finanzas en estascompañías. Se determinó que la auditoríainterna genera valor agregado a la compañía,minimizando el riesgo financiero y mejorandola posición frente a sus competidores.

Corporate naval supply in England’s commercial empire, 1600–1760

Britain’s imperial and commercial success rested on maritime links. Whether trading wool across the Channel to Europe, seeking spices in South Asia or importing sugar from the Caribbean, shipping was an essential resource. Yet, to undertake these trades, merchants required naval supplies – finished ships, timber to build them and stores to fill them – that were not always easily accessible. This challenge was particularly apparent in the early seventeenth century for trading corporations whose specific needs demanded innovative approaches to the naval supply problem. This article examines the responses of English corporations to the challenge of supplying its international shipping by focusing on activities on each side of the Atlantic. First, it assesses the development of the East India Company’s docks at Blackwall and Dundaniel, before turning to a detailed study of ship-building and supply in Virginia and New England. In doing so, this article highlights the importance of naval supply to Britain’s north Atlantic empire, both in terms of the rhetorical support for empire and the economic incentives of participants. This reveals how traditional interpretations of Britain’s naval development have too often focused on state-driven activities (particularly from the very end of the seventeenth century) and failed to examine the complex, sometimes chaotic attempts by private individuals and corporations to overcome the naval supply challenges common to this early period of globalisation.

THE INDIAN COMMUNITY AND ITS ECONOMIC ACTIVITY IN ZANZIBAR DURING THE 19th CENTURY

The Indians were considered the main category working in trade in Zanzibar during the reign of Sultan Saeed Bin Sultan, the founder of the modern state of Zanzibar (1806-1856). The Indian traders got the appreciation and respect of Saeed Bin Sultan and they were allowed to work in trade in the region and he treated them as local traders in order to establish a commercial empire. Hence most of the Indian traders came during his rule, and in 1835, as the case with others, they came with the seasonal wind. The Indian traders were Muslims and Hindu, but they didn’t consider Zanzibar as their homeland, they used to travel to India and come back. Among them, the Moslem Bahara became prominent, most of them were rich traders, who lived in Zanzibar and took it as their homeland. The Indian traders succeeded in supporting the economics of Zanzibar and financing the Arab commercial projects and developing the internal trade. Some of them succeeded in possessing large farms of cloves. And because of their commercial activity and their economic status they succeeded in establishing an excellent social position and they taught their children reading and writing. On the other side Britain encouraged the Indians to migrate to Eastern Africa because of its need for the technical Indian working class and handcraft to make use of their experience. Hence the important role of the Indian merchants in the trade of Eastern Africa came.

India, Modernity and the Great Divergence: Mysore and Gujarat (17th to 19th C.) by Kaveh Yazdani, and: The Industrial Revolution: The State, Knowledge and Global Trade by William J. Ashworth, and: Globalization and the Colonial Origins of the Great Divergence: Intercontinental Trade and Living Standards in the Dutch East India Company's Commercial Empire, c. 1600–1800 by Pim De Zwart

Reviewed by: India, Modernity and the Great Divergence: Mysore and Gujarat (17th to 19th C.) by Kaveh Yazdani, and: The Industrial Revolution: The State, Knowledge and Global Trade by William J. Ashworth, and: Globalization and the Colonial Origins of the Great Divergence: Intercontinental Trade and Living Standards in the Dutch East India Company's Commercial Empire, c. 1600–1800 by Pim De Zwart Tirthankar Roy India, Modernity and the Great Divergence: Mysore and Gujarat (17th to 19th C.). By kaveh yazdani. Leiden: Brill, 2017. 669 pp. $246.00 (paper). The Industrial Revolution: The State, Knowledge and Global Trade. By william j. ashworth. New York: Bloomsbury, 2017. 352 pp. $29.95 (paper). Globalization and the Colonial Origins of the Great Divergence: Intercontinental Trade and Living Standards in the Dutch East India Company's Commercial Empire, c. 1600–1800. By pim de zwart. Leiden: Brill, 2016. 290 pp. $141.00 (hardcover). The Rise of the West and Other Stories Why some countries grow rich before others do, is a question that has been discussed almost from the time modern economic growth began in the mid-nineteenth century, "modern" economic growth being a process driven by productivity gains rather than by the accumulation of resources. Standard answers to this question differed according to the emphasis laid upon market-integration, cultural attributes of societies, or political factors, citing Adam Smith, Max Weber, or Karl Marx in the process. The crucial evidence to test these theories came from Europe and was usually speculative about regions outside Europe. There was a broad agreement that Europe possessed efficient markets, entrepreneurial cultures, and market-friendly states before industrialization ushered in modern economic growth, whereas societies in Asia and Africa did not. In the mid-twentieth century, neo-Marxist writers challenged this Eurocentric view by saying that Europe grew rich by exploiting the rest of the world. But to many, this position was as Eurocentric as the one it criticized. Two things happened around 2000 that changed the discourse. First, Kenneth Pomeranz published his famous book The Great Divergence, which showed that just before industrialization began, advanced regions in Europe and East Asia showed "surprising similarities" in economic conditions.1 The book did two things at once, it shifted attention to non-European regions, and questioned the idea that economic growth had [End Page 280] roots in exceptional European traditions. Second, economists looking for causes of economic growth moved into history. Many of them were inspired by the intellectual movement known as new institutional economic history.2 They were aided in this endeavor by Angus Maddison's huge cross-country dataset on average income by country over several centuries.3 The most influential contributions in this field retained, even reinforced, the idea that economic growth did have roots in European tradition, especially in institutions like laws of property and contract, adding that the transmission of these institutions worldwide faced barriers of a political nature. These two propositions, that there were "surprising similarities," and that Europe made exceptional strides in institutions, did not fit, giving rise to a debate. Better known as the great divergence debate, this exchange has formed the stem of world economic history in recent years. Whether Europe was different or not, the debate shifted attention to the "early modern," roughly the seventeenth-eighteenth centuries, when differences, if any, would have begun to take shape. During these centuries, several processes that would play a large role in world inequality later, such as colonization, expansion of trade, expansion of states, warfare, and the framing of laws, started. That raised the question, if indeed world regions were already different then, were they different because of how these processes began? Between 2000 and 2010, a series of innovative research projects tried to resolve the conflict between surprising similarities and exceptionality. While an earlier crop joined the debate directly, more recent works in the field reflect the debate in a different way. For example, almost all recent contributions on the origins of economic growth try to incorporate the early-modern into an explanation of what made the world more unequal in the nineteenth century; regional comparisons cannot afford to be Eurocentric anymore; and mining data for non-European regions is now...

India, Modernity and the Great Divergence: Mysore and Gujarat (17th to 19th C.) by Kaveh Yazdani, and: The Industrial Revolution: The State, Knowledge and Global Trade by William J. Ashworth, and: Globalization and the Colonial Origins of the Great Divergence: Intercontinental Trade and Living Standards in the Dutch East India Company’s Commercial Empire, c. 1600–1800 by Pim de Zwart

India, Modernity and the Great Divergence: Mysore and Gujarat (17th to 19th C.) by Kaveh Yazdani, and: The Industrial Revolution: The State, Knowledge and Global Trade by William J. Ashworth, and: Globalization and the Colonial Origins of the Great Divergence: Intercontinental Trade and Living Standards in the Dutch East India Company’s Commercial Empire, c. 1600–1800 by Pim de Zwart

On the Origins and Legacies of Really Existing Capitalism: In Conversation with Kari Polanyi Levitt

On the Origins and Legacies of Really Existing Capitalism: In Conversation with Kari Polanyi Levitt

Slavery in a Remote but Global Place: the British East India Company and Bencoolen, 1685-1825

Histories of the British East India Company usually ignore the company’s use of slave labor. Records from its factory at Bencoolen in Sumatra provide an opportunity to examine company attitudes and policies toward its chattel work force in greater detail. These sources reveal that the company drew slaves from a global catchment area to satisfy the demand for labor in its far-flung commercial empire, shed light on policies and practices regarding the treatment of company slaves, and illustrate the company’s role in the development of increasingly interconnected free and forced labor trades during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Bencoolen case study also highlights the need to examine colonial migrant labor systems in the Indian Ocean and maritime Asia worlds in more fully developed contexts.

Rewritting a Pop Culture History

Rewritting a Pop Culture History Beverly C. Tomek (bio) Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America's Past Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter Rutgers University Press www.rutgersuniversitypress.org 396 Pages; Print, $24.95 Playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda's impressive use of social media positioned Hamilton to be a Broadway hit well before it made its off-Broadway debut in January 2015. Starting with a 2008 tweet featuring a picture of himself relaxing in a hammock, while reading Ron Chernow's 2005 biography of Alexander Hamilton, Miranda created a cultural phenomenon that has audiences from multiple backgrounds singing catchy hip-hop tunes about the most capitalist of all American "founding fathers." Since making its way to Broadway about six months after its debut, the play has broken numerous records, from highest-grossing weekly box office in Broadway history to the most Tony nominations for a single show. (It was nominated for sixteen and won eleven.) It is now performed in Chicago and London, and touring companies will soon take it to other cities across the nation. It has become not just a cultural phenomenon but a commercial empire. Fans of the soundtrack have jokingly been diagnosed with "Hamilaria," a disorder that includes "an uncontrollable urge to sing lyrics" from the musical "when prompted by cue lines from everyday conversation." More impressive than its awards and commercial success is the play's ability to appeal to people on all sides of the political spectrum and to create enthusiasm for history among Americans of various age groups, socioeconomic backgrounds, and ethnicities, many of whom who have never seen (and likely will never see) the play live. Of course, as with any attempt to simplify history enough to appeal to a popular audience, particularly a history as complex and politically charged as that of the nation's founding, the project has created some controversy among academics. While some historians have praised the musical for awakening interest in those fortunate enough to see it in theaters as well as those enamored with its soundtrack and social media presence, others have criticized it for a number of reasons. Even positive assessments admit that some of the history is oversimplified at best and in some cases outright wrong. The question remains: "How much does it matter?" Historians Renee Romano and Claire Bond Potter, having been themselves afflicted with Hamilaria, brought together a number of historians, educators, and theater scholars to work through some of these issues while also helping "students and fans dig more deeply into the show." The result is a collection that provides a variety of insights and offers a venue for experts to decide how important the flaws really are. The controversies surrounding the play are many. For one matter, Miranda used nontraditional casting, having actors of color portraying white historical figures. Indeed, all of the main characters are played by black or Latinx actors. Miranda did this because he wanted to tell "a story about America then, told by America now." While there are many actors of color on the stage, there are no significant characters of color in the play. As a result, slavery is brought into the story not by enslaved people or significant black figures of the time but by the notion of Hamilton being an abolitionist. Much is made of Hamilton as an immigrant, and this is meant to resonate in today's political climate by celebrating the contributions of immigrants, but historians have pointed out that Hamilton, who simply moved from one part of the British empire to another, was not an immigrant in the same sense the term applies today. Finally, by focusing on a vision of the US today as more open and inclusive than perhaps it really is and portraying Alexander Hamilton as having some important role in setting the stage for the realization of that ideal, the main character comes off as what today would be called a "progressive." This is an odd way to characterize a "founding father" whose elitism led even some of his contemporaries to raise an eyebrow and whose absolute faith in the monied class and...

Irving’s Astoria and the Forms of Enterprise

Washington Irving’s Astoria, or Anecdotes of an Enterprise beyond the Rocky Mountains (1836), is usually read, when it is read at all, as a lament for an unrealized empire and a call for further US expansion. The wide-ranging text narrates John Jacob Astor’s designs for a Pacific fur empire, the foundation of the American Fur Company (AFC), the two voyages—by sea and by land—that he commissioned to found a trading fort at the mouth of the Columbia River, and the eventual sale of Fort Astoria during the War of 1812 to the Montreal-based North West Company (NWC). Near the end of Astoria, Irving sounds an elegiac note: “In a word, Astoria might have realized the anticipations of Mr. Astor, so well understood and appreciated by Mr. Jefferson, in gradually becoming a commercial empire beyond the Mountains, peopled by ‘free and independent Americans, and linked with us by ties of blood and interest’” (596).1 The tension in Jefferson’s words—between national identity and commercial empire—pervades Irving’s text.