Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America - Couverture rigide

Andreas, Peter

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0199746885 ISBN 13 : 9780199746880

Editeur : Oxford University Press Inc, 2013

Synopsis

America is a smuggler nation. Our long history of illicit imports has ranged from West Indies molasses and Dutch gunpowder in the 18th century, to British industrial technologies and African slaves in the 19th century, to French condoms and Canadian booze in the early 20th century, to Mexican workers and Colombian cocaine in the modern era. Providing a sweeping narrative history from colonial times to the present, Smuggler Nation is the first book to retell the story of America-and of its engagement with its neighbors and the rest of the world-as a series of highly contentious battles over clandestine commerce. As Peter Andreas demonstrates in this provocative and fascinating account, smuggling has played a pivotal and too often overlooked role in America's birth, westward expansion, and economic development, while anti-smuggling campaigns have dramatically enhanced the federal government's policing powers. The great irony, Andreas tells us, is that a country that was born and grew up through smuggling is today the world's leading anti-smuggling crusader. In tracing America's long and often tortuous relationship with the murky underworld of smuggling, Andreas provides a much-needed antidote to today's hyperbolic depictions of out of control borders and growing global crime threats. Urgent calls by politicians and pundits to regain control of the nation's borders suffer from a severe case of historical amnesia, nostalgically implying that they were ever actually under control. This is pure mythology, says Andreas. For better and for worse, America's borders have always been highly porous. Far from being a new and unprecedented danger to America, the illicit underside of globalization is actually an old American tradition. As Andreas shows, it goes back not just years but centuries. And its impact has been decidedly double-edged, not only subverting but also empowering America.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

Peter Andreas is Professor of Political Science and International Studies at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. He was previously an Academy Scholar at Harvard University, a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and an SSRC-MacArthur Foundation Fellow on Peace and Security. Andreas has written numerous books, published widely in scholarly journals and policy magazines, presented Congressional testimony, written op-eds for major newspapers, and provided frequent media commentary.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Oxford University Press Inc
• Date d'édition: 2013
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0199746885
• ISBN 13: 9780199746880
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 352
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Messaggerie Libri ; ufficio.anagrafiche@meli.it; ; Via Verdi, 8; Assago Milano; Italie