| Summary/Abstract |
American merchants of the early republic shaped global sensibilities of trade, but from the margins. If to some foreign observers early American merchants seemed to be “free traders,” the question arises of what enabled these constructions of “free.” This article focuses on two debates: first, “free traders” in Parliamentary hearings on the British East India Company’s monopoly in China, and, second, American involvement in the opium trade in China within a global context of smuggling practice. In the latter case, “free trade” came to connote trade in opposition not to the British Company, but in opposition to a closed China.
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