Work, Class, and Power in the Borderlands of the Early American Pacific: The Labors of Empire - Hardcover

Lampe is to be commended. . . .[R]esearchers and historians of early American commerce in the Pacific . . . need to read this work, as it succeeds admirably in laying out the scope of its thesis and the issues of working people engaged in the enterprise. * International Journal of Maritime History * [A] valuable contribution to maritime history, labor history, and the still-burgeoning field of Pacific studies. * Journal of American History * Evan Lampe's compelling Labors of Empire describes another `triangle trade' that enriches our understanding in at least two vital ways. First, he shows how densely the economic relations of the Northeast United States, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Pacific Coast, Honolulu, and China were linked in the first half of the nineteenth century. Second, he elaborates the way these lines of connections are organized and sustained by a rich multicultural workforce including Amerindians, Euro-Americans, and Chinese often working in the shadow of British, Russian, and Spanish navies and merchants. -- Thomas Bender, New York University

This book explores the nature of power and labor in the early American Pacific from the perspective of sailors, merchants, and the people they encounters across the Pacific. By looking at Honolulu, the merchant ship, Canton, the Whampoa anchorage and the northwest coast, this book considers the broader Pacific while not losing sight of the experiences of the individual sailors, laborers, and port-city denizens.