Dr Tyson Reeder - Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots: Free Trade in the Age of Revolution

Join Tyson Reeder, Assistant Professor (Research) and Assistant Editor of the papers of James Madison, as he speaks about his new book 'Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots: Free Trade in the Age of Revolution'.

'Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots' delineates the differences between the British and Portuguese empires as they struggled with revolutionary tumult. It reveals how those differences led to turbulent transnational exchanges between the United States and Brazil as merchants, smugglers, rogue officials, slave traders, and pirates sought to trade outside legal confines. Tyson Reeder argues that although U.S. traders had forged their commerce with Brazil convinced that they could secure republican trade partners there, they were instead forced to reconcile their vision of the Americas as a haven for republics with the reality of a monarchy residing in the hemisphere. He shows that as twilight fell on the Age of Revolution, Brazil and the United States became fellow slave powers rather than fellow republics.

With Dr David Silkenat, Senior Lecturer in American History at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology.

Free, all welcome.