| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Trade Secrets: Intellectual Piracy and the Origins of American Industrial Power. By Doron S. Ben-Atar. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. xxii, 281 pp. $38.00, ISBN 0-300-10006-X.)
Doron S. Ben-Atar offers a provoking answer to the question of how American manufacturers achieved industrial dominance: They cheated. Americans stole much of the technology associated with the early industrial revolution, often with governmental support.	1
During the colonial and revolutionary era various provincial and state governments attempted to encourage new manufacturing enterprises by offering monopolies and other incentives to skilled immigrants, while Old World powers, England in particular, futilely attempted to stanch the loss of knowledge workers. This policy continued into the early republic, as evidenced by Alexander Hamilton's Report on the Subject of Manufactures (1791), which essentially supported further technology piracy. Ben-Atar identifies several individuals who served, in effect, as American industrial spies in England in the 1780s and 1790s, attempting to convince skilled artisans to emigrate. Additionally, private organizations such as the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts encouraged similar behavior. Some readers may be aware of this activity through David J. Jeremy's work on technology transmission, but Ben-Atar provides an impressive amount of additional detail.	. . .

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