Contraband

1
Contraband

• How did Americans approach the world in the era
  before the US became a global power?

2
Smugglers in the Attic
Edward and Abram Stern Union Station, Washington,
D.C., circa 1906
3
Uncle Ed
Regina Leader-Post, October 9, 1976
4
Nationalism

• Desire for independence
• Fear of sectionalism
• Civil War experience

Gen. Winfield Scott's Anaconda plan, 1861
5
Wealth and Poverty

• Fear rising inequality and the emergence of a
  cosmopolitan upper class, unbound by national
  loyalties
• Constitutional substitute for protective
  legislation

6
Expansion

• Tradenot war is the primary tool of American
  foreign policy between 1830 and 1898

American gunboat in Japan. Hiroshige, 1861
7
Tariff Debate

• Protectionists
• Reformers
• Battle Royal

Harrison battles Cleveland, 1888
8
Regulation

• Customs
• Consuls
• Secret Service

The New York Customhouse, 1884
9
Smugglers
Smuggling on the Rio Grande. Harpers Weekly, 1886

• Professional smugglers were part of normal global
  trade networks.

10
Individuals
Harpers Weekly, 1879

• Travelers often succumbed to immense temptations

11
Class

• Punish hypocrisy
• Suppress development of a cosmopolitan elite.

Rep. Lucius N. Littauer, circa 1900
12
Gender

• Protectionists saw women as social-climbing
  consumers, challenging the masculine producers
  republic.

Female agent inspecting traveler. National Police
Gazette, 1879
13
Anglo-Saxonism
Anti-Semitic Cartoon National Police Gazette,
1879

• Religion
• Race

Black soldiers Brownsville, TX, ca. 1906
14
Morality

• High tariffs on opium, liquor, sugar, and tobacco
• Comstock law (1873) bars importation of
  contraceptives and objects deemed obscene

Searching Chinese immigrants for opium, San
Francisco, January 1882
15
Aspirations

• Gender
• Frontier
• Race

Theodore Roosevelt, NYC, 1885
16
New Interests

• Manufacturing
• Farming
• Merchandising
• Consumption

Candy label, 1868
17
Expansion

• Buildup
• Revolutions
• Conquest

The New Navy of the US, 1892
18
The Choice
Rings seized from Pvt. Emil J. Pepke by Chicago
Customs officials

• After 1898, the War on Smuggling begins long
  decline

19
The American Century
Cartoon in Puck, 1906