With Sails Whitening Every Sea: Mariners and the Making of an American Maritime Empire

TitleWith Sails Whitening Every Sea: Mariners and the Making of an American Maritime Empire
Publication TypeBook
Year of Publication2014
AuthorsRouleau, Brian
Number of Pages280
PublisherCornell University Press
CityIthaca
Abstract

With a merchant marine that competed against Britain for commercial supremacy and a whaling fleet that circled the globe, the United States sought a maritime empire to complement its territorial ambitions in North America. This book argues that because of their ubiquity in foreign ports, American sailors were the principal agents of overseas foreign relations in the early republic. Their everyday encounters and more problematic interactions—barroom brawling, sexual escapades in port-city bordellos, and the performance of blackface minstrel shows—shaped how the United States was perceived overseas. The study details both the mariners' "working-class diplomacy" and the anxieties such interactions inspired among federal authorities and missionary communities, who saw the behavior of American sailors as mere debauchery. Indiscriminate violence and licentious conduct, they feared, threatened both mercantile profit margins and the nation’s reputation overseas.

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879583370

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