Boston Merchants, the Otter Fur Trade, and the Creation of the United States' Global Maritime Economy, 1781–1807

Boston merchants played a central and constitutive role in extending U.S. commerce into the Pacific Ocean after Britain severed its economic ties with its former colonies. These merchants also facilitated the transformation of the Pacific Northwest (present-day Oregon, Washington, British Columbia) by connecting the region to Euro-American manufactures, West Indian raw resources, Chinese silk and porcelain, and a diverse array of communities across the Pacific World. This paper tracks Boston merchants’ initial voyages to western North America en route to China and examines their commercial activities within the sea otter trade. Their success in expanding oceanic networks encouraged more U.S. merchants to focus their trading activities on Pacific commodity flows. This paper de-emphasizes traditional land-based explanations for the major geopolitical, commercial, and cultural changes in early America and instead embraces an ocean-based interpretation. This approach reveals how, by the end of the eighteenth century, the United States' economy was deeply enmeshed in broader transpacific forces. Such an approach also highlights the transformative nature of American-Sino relations since the United States' founding. In substantive ways, the transpacific connections between U.S. merchants and Chinese markets shaped how the United States positioned itself on the global stage as it increasingly pursued national and territorial expansion.