Smuggler Nationis the first book that retells the story of America and its engagement with its neighbors and the rest of the world as a series of highly contentious battles over clandestine commerce, from colonial times to the modern age. Illicit imports have ranged from West Indies molasses and Dutch gunpowder in the 18th century, to British industrial technologies and African slaves in the 19th century, to European condoms and Canadian booze in the early 20th century, to Mexican migrants and Colombian cocaine in the modern era. These smuggling episodes-and the campaigns to suppress them-have transformed America and its foreign relations. As Andreas demonstrates in this provocative and fascinating account, smuggling has played an essential and too often overlooked role in America's birth, westward expansion, and economic development, while anti-smuggling campaigns have dramatically enhanced the federal government's policing powers. The great irony, Andreas tells us, is that a country that was born and grew up through smuggling is today the world's leading anti-smuggling crusader. In tracing America's long and often tortuous relationship with the murky underworld of smuggling, Andreas provides a much-needed antidote to today's hyperbolic depictions of seemingly out of control borders and growing global crime threats. Urgent calls by politicians and pundits to "regain control" of the nation's borders suffer from a severe case of historical amnesia, nostalgically implying that they were ever actually under control. This is pure mythology. For better and for worse, America's borders have always been highly porous. Far from being a new and unprecedented danger to America, the illicit underside of globalization is actually an old American tradition. It goes back not just years or decades but centuries. And its impact has been decidedly double-edged, not only subverting but also empowering America.