Andreas Awarded Salomon Grant to Research History of Smuggling

March 3, 2010

Institute Associate Professor Peter Andreas will research the role of illicit commerce – and the policing of such commerce – in America’s birth, consolidation, growth, and international engagements as a recipient of one of the University’s Richard B. Salomon Faculty Research Awards for 2010.

Andreas, who is also in Brown’s Department of Political Science, is writing a book tentatively titled Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America (under contract with Oxford University Press).

The central question that motivates his book project is: How has illicit trade shaped America, and how has this varied across time and illicit trading activities? In answering this question, he examines America’s engagement with the world as a battle over illicit trade, from smuggling untaxed goods and “trading with the enemy” in defiance of British imperial policies in colonial times, to illicit slave trading and Civil War blockade running in the 19th century, to migrant smuggling and drug trafficking in the 20th century, to “cybersmuggling” in the 21st century.

The Salomon Awards support excellence in scholarly work by providing funding for selected faculty research projects deemed to be of exceptional merit.