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Defying Empire
Category:
History
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN-10: 0300118406
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 288
Copyright: 2008
ISBN-13: 9780300118407
Narrative history of mid-eighteenth-century New York City's trade with the enemy during the last of the great Anglo-French colonial wars.
This book is the first to uncover the story of New York City merchants who engaged in forbidden trade with the enemy prior to and during the Seven Years’ War, (known also as the French and Indian War). Ignoring British commercial law that forbade North American overseas trade with the French, New York’s merchant elite continued to conduct business in the French West Indies, insisting that their behavior was protected by precedent and long practice. But the British viewed it as treachery, and their subsequent harsh efforts to suppress North American trade inflamed the colonists further.
Historian Thomas Truxes brings eighteenth century New York, its fast-moving events, and its unforgettable characters to life: spies, street riots, courtroom dramas, battles on the high seas, ambitious businessmen, political intrigue, and more. The author traces the phases of the city’s trade with the enemy and details the recriminations, restrictions, and frustration experienced by both the British and New Yorkers. The first book to focus on New York City during the Seven Years’ War, Defying Empire reveals the important role of the city in hastening the colonies’ march toward revolution.
Thomas M. Truxes is senior lecturer in the history department at Trinity College in Hartford. His previous books include Irish American Trade, 1660-1783. He lives in Westbrook, CT.
Excerpt
From the Prologue to Defying Empire:
Manhattan sparkled in the crisp October night. Two large bonfires on the Common, thousands of candle-lit windows, and a sea of ships’ lanterns, like autumn fireflies, lit the tiny city and its harbor. Four weeks earlier, Major-General James Wolfe’s British regulars had defeated a force under the marquis de Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham at Quebec, the key to French control of Canada and the interior of North America. When news reached New York City, Lieutenant-Governor James DeLancey declared Friday, October 12, 1759, a day of public thanksgiving.
Church bells across the city proclaimed the British victory. With colors flying, merchant ships and privateers on the East River answered the cannons of Fort George. Evening brought the illumination of the city and a flood of toasts: To His Majesty’s health, to the might of British arms, to the heroes of Quebec, to final victory. The drawing rooms, coffeehouses, taverns, and streets of the city filled with joyous New Yorkers celebrating the greatest achievement of British arms in North America.
With Wolfe’s victory, as well as recent British successes at Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point, the expulsion of the French now seemed inevitable. But the war was not yet won. Great Britain and France remained locked in an armed conflict that reached around the world. Armies were colliding in Europe, Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and the Philippines, and there were naval operations with an even longer reach. In the North American and Caribbean theaters, Great Britain and France struggled for control of a vast and rich colonial empire.
Although weakened by its losses, France still held on at Montreal and New Orleans, as well as in the West Indian Islands, that great wealth-producing garden of the eighteenth century. The country’s grip was precarious, however. The Royal Navy, though spread thin, had effectively cut off the flow of French supplies and was blocking the return of colonial sugar, indigo, and coffee to Bordeaux, Nantes, and other home markets. Securing a lifeline to French America was a pressing concern of strategists at Versailles.
All of this seemed far away that October night. New Yorkers were eager to forget the defeat of British regulars and colonial militia at Oswego, Fort William Henry, and Ticonderoga earlier in the war, as well as the carnage of Indian raids along the colony’s sparsely settled frontier. In spite of setbacks, the war had been good to the city, particularly to those New Yorkers who recognized opportunity and had an appetite for risk. That night the homes of the city’s merchant elite glittered with wartime wealth, and in smoke-filled dockside taverns, sailors and privateersmen had money in their pockets to celebrate Wolfe’s victory and compete for women of easy virtue.
Nearby, in the shadow world of New York harbor and the darkened warehouses, storerooms, and cellars of the commercial district, lay the source of the city’s prosperity. Hundreds of barrels of flour, salted provisions, and naval stores, together with vast quantities of lumber, cordage, and dry goods of all kinds, stood ready for shipment--either directly or along clever serpentine paths--to Cape François, Port au Prince, and New Orleans. Wartime New York was growing rich through its trade with the French enemy.
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