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Book Review
Comparative/World
Sam A. Mustafa. Merchants and Migration: Germans and Americans in Connection, 17761835. (Modern Economic and Social History.) Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate. 2001. Pp. xvii, 284. $74.95.
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The American Revolution freed the United States from the British navigation acts. For the first time, the former thirteen colonies could trade directly with continental northern Europe. Between 1776 and 1835, direct trade between the United States and the Hanseatic ports of Bremen, Hamburg, and Lübeck developed haphazardly but nevertheless grew substantially. Frequently, the volume of this trade was second in importance only to the volume of trade with Great Britain. Sam A. Mustafa explores the development and growth of the U.S.-Hanseatic trading connection through the extensive correspondence found in surviving letterbooks, account books, and family papers of the merchants involved in the trade. It is important to note that, despite the book's title and the nature of the primary sources used, this book is not about migration, nor about how merchant-shippers ran their import/export businesses, nor about how merchant consuls-in-residence dealt with the legal issues brought to them by fellow merchant-shippers who had run afoul of a foreign government's legal system. Mustafa's purpose is more narrow: namely, to highlight the role merchants played in the evolution of political and diplomatic ties between the U.S. and various German states. |
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