The Privileges of Independence: Neomercantilism and the American Revolution.

In a little book that covers the years from the start of the Revolution in 1763 to the ratification of the Jay Treaty in 1795, John Crowley develops the view that nearly all American Revolutionary leaders--including James Madison and Thomas Jefferson--were "mercantilists"; and, he argues, so were nearly all British leaders. Notable exceptions were Alexander Hamilton and a few British policymakers; Crowley classifies them as "neomercantilists." Of course, the notion that Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, and the other Revolutionary leaders were mercantilists of one kind or another is not new. Thirty years ago William A. Williams, a founder of the New Left School of American history, explored such a possibility at the beginning of his iconoclastic and influential essay, The Contours of American History (1961). He also published two articles spelling out his arguments in greater detail: "The Age of Mercantilism: An Interpretation of the American Political Economy, 1763-1828," and "Samuel Adams: Calvinist, Mercantilist, Revolutionary."(1) Williams claimed to have based his interpretation on a suggestion by the Progressive historian, Curtis P. Nettels, that one consequence of British mercantilism was the founding of a "new mercantilist state on this side of the Atlantic."(2)

That Williams wrote extensively about a mercantilist "conception of the world shared by most of the revolutionary generation" in no way detracts from Crowley's reflections on the subject, of course.(3) But there is a need to set the historiographical record straight when the author of The Privileges of Independence: Neomercantilism and the American Revolution alludes in passing to Williams's contributions as part of some "rich revisionist historiography taking its orientation from ideological conflicts of the New Deal era". Moreover, the comparison with Williams underscores the fact that Crowley's use of the concept of mercantilism is incidental to a larger purpose--namely, to prove that the American revolutionary leaders were not economic liberals. In this connection, Crowley's discussion of the world views of Madison, Jefferson, and Hamilton promises to both broaden and sharpen scholarly debate over republicanism, capitalism and liberalism in revolutionary America. And could anyone fail to respond to Crowley's clarion call to extend the discourse of political culture to include political economy?

Crowley's point of reference throughout his study is Adam Smith's "classic work of liberal political economy" …