American Commerce, American Empire: Late 19th‐Century Merchant Organizations and Trade Policy

• Author: Cory Davis
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12309
• Published date: 01 January 2020
• Date: 01 January 2020

American Commerce, American Empire: Late

19th-Century Merchant Organizations and

Trade Policy

By Cory Davis*

abstraCt. The American debate over free trade and protectionism has

taken many forms, but it is particularly instructive when it occurs

within a single sector of the economy, pitting allied economic interests

against each other. That occurred in the shipping industry in the 19th

century when shippers and shipbuilders fought each other over trade-

related questions: subsidies for shipbuilding and reciprocal trade

agreements with foreign nations. Shipbuilders wanted protection and

subsidies; shippers wanted the freedom to make use of cheaper

foreign vessels for trade and to develop trade agreements. We show

how these opposing forces stymied each other and prevented the

shipping industry from taking an active, unified role in national

politics. These particular intra-industry debates reveal broader

divisions within the business community over the relationship between

business and government under modern commercial capitalism.

Introduction

In the history of the United States, dating back to its founding, busi-

ness and politics have shared an important relationship that belies

any simplistic attempt to define the relationship as antagonistic or

cooperative. Far from adhering to a pure, free-market orthodoxy, itself

a product of modern economic thought, businessmen and public pol-

icymakers have consistently attempted to shape the course of eco-

nomic development, and the 19th century was no exception to this

pattern. Indeed, a closely regulated American economy was a central

aspect of what one legal historian has referred to as the “well-or-

dered society” of 19th-century America (Novak 1996: 2). Debates over

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 79, No. 1 (January, 2020).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12309

© 2019 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

*Historian specializing in the history of capitalism. Lecturer in the history depart-

ment, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). PhD in history from UIC. Email: cdavis26

@uic.edu

116 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology

the exact shape of this “well-ordered” economy, on everything from

bank charters and monetary standards to labor laws and international

trade relations, dominated public discourse at key moments across

the course of the century, as the American economy evolved from a

predominantly agricultural republic with a nascent industrial home

market to a major industrial nation with an increasing focus on foreign

trade by the end of the century.

Beginning in the mid-19th century, merchants across the United

States began to organize into local commercial bodies in order to

better cooperate and advocate economic practices and regulations

that would benefit their locality. As the country grew, and especially

as transportation and communication improvements linked regional

markets to create a more integrated national marketplace, these com-

mercial organizations began to think and act in a more nationalist

spirit. During the Civil War, this spirit of commercial nationalism led

to the creation of the National Board of Trade (NBOT), the country’s

first major national commercial organization. The NBOT sought to

bring the collective wisdom of the merchant community to the arena

of national economic policymaking in the name of “commercial re-

publicanism,” a broad sense of duty and responsibility to turn their

expertise in private enterprise to purposes of the collective economic

good, as they understood it.

Many different aspects of policy came under the purview of the

NBOT after its creation in 1868. One of the most important and fre-

quently discussed topics by the members of the NBOT was the va-

riety of ways in which the U.S. government structured trade policies

related both to the domestic and foreign trade of the United States.

Arguments between supporters of subsidizing economic development

through government policy and those who championed fewer regu-

lations on trade date back to the 1790s, but these arguments gained

even greater purchase in the late 19th century as a growing industrial

and agricultural economy looked beyond the home market to the

possibility of establishing American commercial preeminence across

the globe. Historians and social scientists have long highlighted the

interwoven nature of the politics of economic growth and American

expansionism, including the work of William Becker (1982), Walter

LaFeber (1963), Robert Wiebe (1962), and, more recently, Andrew