ABOUT THIS BOOK

Explores the surprisingly rich early history of US-China trade and its unexpected impact on the developing republic.

The economic and geographic development of the early United States is usually thought of in trans-Atlantic terms, defined by entanglements with Europe and Africa. In Trading Freedom, Dael A. Norwood recasts these common conceptions by looking to Asia, making clear that from its earliest days, the United States has been closely intertwined with China—monetarily, politically, and psychologically.

Norwood details US trade with China from the late eighteenth through the late nineteenth centuries—a critical period in America’s self-definition as a capitalist nation—and shows how global commerce was central to the articulation of that national identity. Trading Freedom illuminates how debates over political economy and trade policy, the building of the transcontinental railroad, and the looming sectional struggle over slavery were all influenced by Sino-American relations. Deftly weaving together interdisciplinary threads from the worlds of commerce, foreign policy, and immigration, Trading Freedom thoroughly dismantles the idea that American engagement with China is anything new.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Dael A. Norwood is assistant professor of history at the University of Delaware.

REVIEWS

“An impressively ambitious book, surveying US commercial involvement with China from the departure of the Empress of China, which sailed from New York in 1784, to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Books on China and the United States in this period typically cover either trade or immigration—Trading Freedom is the rare book to tackle both.”

— Eliga Gould, University of New Hampshire

“Norwood’s wide-ranging and lively history of the early China trade is rich with insights about both the trade itself and how it changed Americans' understanding of their own economic position in the world. Trading Freedom makes a compelling case for taking a much longer view of the United States’ evolving commercial relationship with China.”

— Caitlin Rosenthal, University of California, Berkeley

“Tightly written and cogently argued, Trading Freedom boldly reinterprets the dynamic and multifaceted trans-Pacific connection of the nineteenth century. In Norwood’s masterful telling, the China trade conditioned America’s experience of ‘free commerce’ globalization, as well as molded US political economy, often in unexpected ways. At a time in which it has never been more important to revisit the long history of US-China relations, this book is the best place to start.”

— Jay Sexton, University of Missouri

"An excellent, and much needed, account of China's pivotal role in the US economy since the very inception of the Republic."

— Amitav Ghosh, author of The Nutmeg's Curse and The Great Derangement

"Stimulating. . . An important intervention into a variety of scholarly debates. . . . By calling much needed attention to the precocious and sometimes prominent place of China in the political economy of the United States during the ‘long’ nineteenth century, Norwood deserves praise."

— Economic History

"Dael Norwood’s Trading Freedom studies the relationship between economic activity connected to American trade with China and American politics . . . This is unapologetically history at high speed and from a great altitude, and functions as an extended essay about how American politicians have talked about China."

— American Nineteenth Century History

"This is a must-read for anyone who is interested in the global aspects of the political economy of early America and the historical root of the engagement between China and the United States. Lucidly written in a narrative style, it can be readily incorporated into undergraduate courses that seek to position the history of the United States in the world."

— Eighteenth-Century Studies

"Trading Freedom tells us much about the connections between global commerce and politics in the nineteenth century and, indeed, our present day."

— Journal of the Civil War Era

"Dael A. Norwood’s Trading Freedom is a wonderful and significant new work: wonderful
because it is so well written and well edited, with imaginative turns of phrase and occasional injections of ironic humor; significant because it links America’s China trade to the debates among elites that helped shape the nation’s political economy and often cast long shadows into the twenty-first century."

— The Journal of American History

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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