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

In a work of sweep and ambition, James Fichter explores how American trade proved pivotal to the evolution of capitalism in the United States and helped to shape the course of the British Empire. Before the American Revolution, colonial merchants were part of a trading network that spanned the globe. After 1783, U.S. merchants began trading in the East Indies independently, creating a new class of investor-capitalists and the first generation of American millionaires. Such wealth was startling in a country where, a generation earlier, the most prosperous Americans had been Southern planters. This mercantile elite brought its experience and affluence to other sectors of the economy, helping to concentrate capital and create wealth, and paving the way for the modern business corporation. Conducted on free trade principles, American trade in Asia was so extensive that it undermined the monopoly of the British East India Company and forced Britain to open its own free trade to Asia. The United States and the British Empire thus converged around shared, Anglo-American free-trade ideals and financial capitalism in Asia. American traders also provided a vital link to the Atlantic world for Dutch Java and French Mauritius, and were at the vanguard of Western contact with Polynesia and the Pacific Northwest. Based on an impressive array of sources from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the United States, this pathbreaking book revolutionizes our understanding of the early American economy in a global context and the relationship between the young nation and its former colonial ­master. Contents Introduction chapter one. Revolution chapter two. America Sails East chapter three. Commerce in a World at War chapter four. America’s Re- export Boom chapter five. Merchant Millionaires chapter six. Beyond the British Empire chapter seven. The India Trade chapter eight. America’s China and Pacific Trade chapter nine. Death of the India Monopoly chapter ten. American Capital and Corporations Conclusion Archival. Sources. Abbreviations. Notes. Acknowledgments. Index Archival Sources Abbreviations Notes Acknowledgments Index "This remarkable book shows the crucial role of American traders in global commerce during years of general war, and makes a bold revisionist argument for the role of the capital the merchants accumulated in the ̀great divergence' between North Atlantic societies and the rest of the world. Based on wide research and full of lively writing about a remarkable variety of places and people, it will be read with profit and pleasure by all students of the origins of the modern world."-- Book jacket Revolution America sails east Commerce in a world at war America's re-export boom Merchant millionaires Beyond the British empire The India trade America's China and Pacific trade The death of the India monopoly American capital and corporations.