The best sentence I read today was:
“Before 1815 the American East Indies trade made the United States and Britain more like one another– ironically, given how fundamental the Boston Tea Party had been in driving the two apart.”
James R. Fichter, So Great a Proffit: How the East Indies Transformed Anglo-American Capitalism (Harvard University Press: 2010) p. 278
Actually the book whole book the sentence if from is rather good. Fichter has written a brilliant book that, among other things, helps to explain the transition from mercantilism to the more liberal form of capital that was ascendant throughout the English-speaking world after 1815. The writing is brilliant and the analysis seems quite plausible, at least to me, a non-expert in the field. The research that went into this book is really impressive. The archives visited by the author include:
Archivo General de Indias, Seville
Bibliothèque nationale de France
Cape Town Archives Repository
St. Helen Archives (on the remote island to which Napoleon was sent)
Plus the national archives of the United States, the United Kingdom, and, of course, Mauritius
I read this wonderful book in the course of updating my lecture notes on the Maritime fur trade of the northwest coast of North America. While Fichter’s book certainly won’t replace Gibson’s study of the fur trade in that region, it complements it quite well by allowing us to put the otter skin trade into a new perspective.
Fichter is Assistant Professor of History, Lingnan University, Hong Kong. His book has been discussed another blog.
The Past Speaks 