The Rise of New York Port Robert G. Albion

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Robert G. Albion's "The Rise of New York Port, 1815-1860"The Rise of New York Port, 1815-1860 by Robert Greenhalgh AlbionReview by: Clifton HoodReviews in American History, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Jun., 1999), pp. 171-179Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30031047.

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2/10

IN RETROSPECT

ROBERT G.

ALBION'S

THE

RISE

OF

NEW

YORK

PORT,

1815-1860

Clifton Hood

Robert Greenhalgh Albion. TheRiseofNew YorkPort,1815-1860. New York:

Charles Scribner's

Sons,

1939;

reprint

edition,

Boston: Northeastern Univer-

sity

Press,

1984.

xv

+

485

pages. Figures, maps, appendixes, bibliography,

and

index.

$45

(cloth);

$18.95

(paper).

Sixty years

after

it

was

published

in

1939,

Robert G. Albion's

The

Rise

of

New

York

Port,

1815-1860 remains

the standard

account

of

New York

City's

emergence

as

the dominant

metropolis

in

North America. This

book,

which

is

still

in

print

today,

is

impressive

for its

prodigious

research and for the

broad,

transatlantic

perspective

it takes on urban

growth.

YetAlbion's

study

is also

in

many

ways

old and outdated.

Having

been

overtaken

by

the

advent of

social

history

as

the

profession's

dominant subfield and

bypassed by

the

newer

theoretical

and

quantitative

trends

that

prevail

in

economic

history,

it

now fits one definition of

a

scholarly

classic:

much

cited,

little

read,

seldom

discussed.

A

very

long

time

indeed has

passed

since

a

survey

of

historians

taken

in

the

early

1950s ranked

The Rise

of

New York

Port

in

the

honorable

mention

category

of

preferred

works in

American

history.1

For someone who made his greatest mark with a study of New YorkCity,

Robert G. Albion

took

little

interest

in

cities or their

history.

He instead

identified

himself

as

a

maritime historian.

Most

of the

sixteen books that

Albion

wrote, co-wrote,

or

edited

during

his

long

life dealt with

some

aspect

of

the

sea,

including

Square-Riggers

n

Schedule:

TheNew York

Sailing

Packets o

England,

France,

and

the CottonPorts

(1938),

Sea Lanes

n

Wartime:TheAmerican

Experience,

775-1942

(1942),

and

Seaports

South

of

the Sahara:The

Achievement

of

an

American

Steamship

Service

1959).2

His

attachment

to

the sea

began early.

Born

in

1896,

Albion

grew up

on

the

shores of

Maine's Casco

Bay,

where

he

spent

much time on the water. After

earning

a B.A. in

economics

from

Bowdoin

College

and then

serving

as an

infantry

officer

during

World

War

I,

Albion

entered

graduate

school

at

Harvard.

There

he

developed

his

interest in

maritime

history,

writing

a

dissertation

on

the

timber

problem

of

the

Royal

Reviews in American

History

27

(1999)

171-179

@

1999

by

The

Johns

Hopkins

University

Press

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


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172

REVIEWS

IN AMERICAN

HISTORY

/

JUNE

1999

Navy

that

was

published

in

book form

in

1926. As

the title of this

book-

Forests and Sea Power:

The Timber

Problem

of

the

Royal

Navy,

1652-1862-

suggests,

Albion's

early

thinking

about the

oceans

was

strongly

influenced

by

Alfred T. Mahan and Frederick Jackson Turner.

Borrowing

from Mahan,

Albion saw the

oceans as an

arena of

economic and

military competition

whose

control

shaped

the

destiny

of

nations.

Reacting

to

Turner,

Albion

viewed the sea as a

second frontier that

had

exerted

a

powerful,

if

underrated,

influence on American

society.

Albion,

Samuel Eliot

Morrison,

and

other

maritime

historians

believed that

oceanic commerce

had

contributed

sig-

nificantly

to

the

growth

of the

U.S.

economy.3 They

contended that

American

historians had

overlooked the

importance

of the water

frontier to

the

east. 4

Albion wanted to lift scholarly knowledge and public awareness of

maritime

history

to the level that

the Turnerian

frontier

commanded. As a

faculty

member

first

at

Princeton and

then

at

Harvard,

Albion

offered

a

course on oceanic

history

that

was

popular

with

students,

who

affectionately

called

it

Boats.

In

addition to

his

writing

and

teaching,

he

participated

in

many

other

aspects

of maritime

history-lecturing

at the

U.S.

Naval

Academy

and the Naval War

College;

advising

maritime

museums;

giving

a

pioneering

television course

on the

subject;

and

serving

on the editorial

board of the

quarterly

journal

American

Neptune.

A

festschrift published

in

his honor is

suitably

illustratedwith a

photograph

that shows a

jovial

Albion

standing

in

front of

a

sailing ship

at

Mystic

Seaport.

Albion died

in

1983

in

Groton,

Connecticut,

not far from

Long

Island

Sound.5

Albion's

conception

of maritime

history

was

shaped by

his

understanding

of classical economics. He was

primarily

concerned

with

the

organization

of

economic

activity

and with

the rationalization of maritime affairs. As he saw

it,

the Atlantic

world

(and

for

Albion,

maritime

history largely

meant the

Atlantic

ocean)

generally stopped

at

the shoreline

and

consisted of the ocean

itself and of efforts to organize and control it. He focused on the management

of

shipping companies

and,

to

a

lesser

extent,

on the administration of the

navy,

and

he evaluated their effectiveness

by

how well

they inaugurated

new

techniques

and

policies

that solved

problems

and led to

greater efficiency.

His

writings

accordingly

centered on

company

owners,

navy

brass,

middle

managers,

and

ship captains

rather than

on

sailors or dock workers.

The

conflict

in

Albion's work is not

among

social

groups

but most of the

time

between nature's

unpredictability

and the human

impulse

toward control

and

some of the time between nations. There is not much sense

in

Albion's

work of

the ocean as

a

place

of fundamental cultural clashes

or

sharp

social

disputes.

There is

a

strong triumphalist

element

in

Albion's

scholarship.

Problems

are

eventually

solved:

square-riggers

are

put

on

schedule,

American steam-

ships

establish a

commanding

position

south of the

Sahara,

the

port

of New



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HOOD

/

In

Retrospect

173

York rises.

Initially,

Albion had

planned

The Rise

of

New

YorkPort as the

middle volume of

a

trilogy

that would examine New York

City's

entire

maritime

history.

It seems

characteristic

of Albion's

optimism

that he

could

not

bring

himself to

complete

this

trilogy

by writing

either the first volume,

on the

colonial

period

when the

port

of New

York

lagged

behind

Boston

and

Philadelphia,

or

the

second

one,

on

the late-nineteenth and

twentieth-century

years

when it achieved

and then lost world dominance. One

result of Albion's

frame of reference

is that he sees New York as

a

unique

place

rather

than

as a

type

of

port city. Largely

because his

primary

interest is in the

reasons for

New

York's

rise,

Albion

limits the

extent

of his

urban

comparisons

to

a

consideration

of how New York

differed from rival American

seaports

and

why it achieved success. By sticking to this question and stopping at the point

when New York became

dominant,

Albion does

not

put

New

York

in

the

context

of

major

Atlantic

port

cities such as

London,

Liverpool,

Hamburg,

Rotterdam,

and Amsterdam.6

The Rise

of

New York

Port

was

Albion's most

highly regarded

book and

established

his

reputation

as an

eminent maritime historian.

If

it

is remem-

bered

chiefly

as

a

work of

city

history,

that is

largely

because the

attempts

of

Albion, Morrison,

and other

scholars

to

position

maritime

history

as a

permanent

historical subfield were

ultimately

fruitless,

and so the

profes-

sional niche into which TheRise

of

New YorkPort

best fits

today

is that of

urban

history.

The

irony

is

that TheRise

of

New YorkPort

was

actually

Albion's most

ambitious effort to demonstrate the

importance

of the second

frontier to

American life.

It

employs

maritime

history

to

explain

the

emergence

of New

York as the dominant

national

metropolis

and

ties oceanic affairs

directly

to

national

economic

growth. Perhaps

the best

reason

why

The

Rise

of

New York

Port

deserves

to

be

remembered

as a

work of maritime

history

rather

than of

urban

history

is that it

is

a

study

of a

port

rather

than

of

a

city.

Albion does not

connect New York's waterfront and maritime functions to the largercity; he

does not relate the

port's

commercial and

technological

changes

to the

city's

spatial

and

social

development.'

Nonetheless,

the book

has

a

much

broader

scope

than

any

of

Albion's

other

monographs,

which

suffer

from his limited

conception

of

maritime affairs as

a

realm of economic

competition

and

managerial efficiency.

The book

also

displays

great

confidence and

authority.

As its most

perceptive

reviewer

noted,

The

Rise

of

New

YorkPort was a

masterly

volume

[that

tells its

story]

clearly, dramatically,

and

authorita-

tively. 8

The

subject

of

the book is how

the merchants of New

Yorkestablished

their

city

as the

leading

American

seaport.

In

1800 New York

ranked

as

the

second

largest city

in

the

United

States,

after

Philadelphia.

Although

New

York

finally surpassed

Philadelphia

to

become

the

largest city

in

the

country

twenty years

later,

even then it

was

scarcely

dominant.

In

1820 New Yorkhad



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174

REVIEWS IN

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/

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1999

a

population

of

123,000,

compared

to

112,000

for the

City

of

Brotherly

Love.

But New York

boomed

after

1820.

By

1860 New Yorkhad a

population

of over

one million

(including

the

independent

city

of

Brooklyn)

and

was

twice

as

big

as Philadelphia.Two-thirds of all U.S. imports, one-third of its

exports,

and 70

percent

of its

immigrants passed

through

New

York

harbor on the eve of the

Civil

War.

In

the four

decades before

the

Civil

War,

New

York went from

being

a

regional

center to

being

the nation's

trade,

manufacturing,

financial,

and

communications center.

It is

significant

that

Albion

chose

to

address the

issue of

why

New York

City

achieved

dominance,

for

it

was

not

a new

one. For

over

a

century,

New

York

City history

had

been the

purview

of

wealthy

amateurs who waxed

enthusiastic over this very matter.As the Reverend Samuel Osgood bubbled

in

1867,

New York

City

was one of the marvels of the

age,

if

not one of the

wonders of the world. 9 For

Osgood

and

other

gentlemen

amateurs,

the

source of

New

York's

splendors

was

clear: their

own social class was

responsible

for

the

city's greatness.

Discomfited

by

rapid

urban

change

and

particularly

by immigration,

these amateurs

positioned

themselves as the

caretakers of

city history

and

sought

to

put

New

York

on

a

par

with

the

great

European

cities.

Even

though

this

hagiographical

tradition,

which

remained

very

much alive

in

the

1930s,

might

have deterred other

professional

histori-

ans

from

embarking

on

a

study

of

the

ascendancy

of

New York that

would

center

on its

merchants,

Albion was

impervious

to

it.

To

be

sure,

Albion was

conservative

in his

politics

and his

scholarship,

yet

TheRise

of

New YorkPort

is

the

product

of a

consummate outsider

who was not

inclined

to celebrate New

York

City.

As a New

Englander

who felt little

if

any personal

connection to

New

York

City,

as a

maritime historian

who was

making

his

only study

of

New York

City,

Albion

could

easily

view New York

n

broad

perspective.

Just

as

tackling

a

new

subject

unleashed

Albion's creative

energies

and

let

him

overcome some of maritimehistory's interpretationalbarriers,so his outsider

status let

him

avoid

the

trap

of

urban

parochialism.

It

is also

noteworthy

that Albion saw the

rise

of

New

York

port

as an

analytical problem

that had to

be

explained

one

way

or

other.

He

does

not

believe

that

geography

alone

determined urban success. Of

course,

Albion

does not

neglect

New

York's natural

advantages.

He

provides

a

thorough

analysis

of the

city's

river-and-harbor

system

that

confirms

its

geographical

superiority

to

other North

American

seaports.

New York

harbor,

Albion tells

us,

had

five main

geographical advantages: 1)

a

relatively

short,

seventeen-

mile

long

sea

approach

from the

ocean to the berths

in

Manhattan;

2)

the

Upper Bay,

a

large,

interior harbor

that

protected shipping

from

storms;

3)

deep anchorages directly alongside

the East

River,

the main

landing

area

for

sailing ships;

4)

Long

Island

Sound,

a safe back

door

route to

New

England

that

sheltered coastal

shipping

from storms

and

enemy

attack;

and



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In

Retrospect

175

5)

the Hudson

River,

a

wide,

deep

channel that was

navigable

far into

the

interior.

But nature

alone,

Albion

insists,

explains

little.

Geographical

deter-

minism

cannot

account

for

why

New York

port lagged

behind

first

Boston

and then

Philadelphia

in the seventeenth and

eighteenth

centuries or

why

it

eventually

achieved

pre-eminence

in the nineteenth

century.

Instead,

Albion

rightly

thinks that

geography

becomes

important

in

a

particular

economic

context

where

natural

advantages,

urban

leadership,

technology,

and

markets

interact.

Albion was convinced

that

the

key

events

that were

responsible

for the rise

of New York

City

occurred

in

the

early

nineteenth

century,

that

is,

during

the

same

period

as

the

city's

takeoff itself. He examines New York's rise

in

the

context of a comparative framework. He contends that New York was

engaged

in a

rivalry

for

commercial

supremacy

with four

other American

seaports-Boston,

Philadelphia,

Baltimore,

and

Charleston,

South

Carolina.

Although

his

adoption

of this

comparative approach represents

a

major

advance over

earlier

narrative

histories

that had

focused

exclusively

on New

York

City,

Albion's

treatment of the other four

ports

is

cursory.

He conceives

of these

seaports

as

being

undifferentiated

regional

centers

at

the

beginning

of

his

study,

in

1815,

and

he

does not examine their social and

economic

structures

or

consider

that

a

city's

economic

base,

leadership,

cultural

tradi-

tions,

or ethnic

makeup may

have

shaped

its

evolution. Here

again,

Albion

separates

the

port

from the

city

and does not

ask

how

maritime functions

were interrelated with

urban

spatial

and social

developments.

And,

except

for

a

few remarks that

single

out

Philadelphia

for criticism for

being

conserva-

tive,

if

not

actually 'sleepy '

and

for

lacking

initiative and

foresight,

Albion

regards

the

seaports

as monolithic

(pp.

374-75).

He

assumes that the leaders

of

all five

seaports

shared the

same

goals

and outlook but that

only

the

merchants

of

New York

showed much

spark

in

initiating

economic

improve-

ments. It is not clear from The Rise of New York Port why New York's

merchants

proved

so different

from

those

in

the other

ports.

In a

brief

overview of colonial New

York,

Albion

implies

that

the

city's

founding

as a

Dutch

trading post may

have

produced

a

permanent

orientation toward

commerce.

However,

he

does not

elaborate on this

insight

and the

sources

of

New

York's

uniqueness

remain

in

doubt.

On the

whole,

Albion takes the view

that

Philadelphia,

Boston,

Baltimore,

and

Charleston were losers that

simply

failed to measure

up.

The last

chapter

in

the

book,

The

Disappointed

Rivals,

concludesthat

the

competing seaports

had

missed their

chance and

needed

to

be roused from their

lethargy (pp.

373,

377).

Albion

says

that the

key

to

New York's

success was this:

It drew to

itself

the three

major

trade

routes-from

Europe,

from the southern

ports,

and

from

the

West

(p.

10).

He

writes that

New

York

gained

a

competitive

edge

over

rival

seaports

because its

enterprising

businessmen

anticipated

the

growth

of



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1999

trade

following

the

Napoleonic

Wars and

captured

the bulk of it for

them-

selves. Between 1815

and

1860,

New York

merchants made several

improve-

ments

that

exploited

their

city's

geographical advantages

and turned it

into

a

commercial

emporium.

The Erie Canalwas

easily

the most dramaticof these

improvements.

Completed

in

1825,

the canal

extended 363 miles across

upstate

New

York,

providing

a

water-level route from the Hudson River to

the

Great Lakes that redirected much of the

Midwestern trade

through

New

York

City. Though

Albion

recognizes

the Erie

Canal's

contributions,

he

corrects

earlier writers who

exaggerated

its

significance.

As a maritime

historian,

he

assigns priority

to advances

in

Atlantic

shipping

that

gave

New

York

control of southern U.S.

and

European

trade routes. Albion's

rejection

of

the Erie Canal explanation was a major scholarly advance that compelled

historians

to examine New York

n

context of the Atlantic

world,

although

he

is

too

quick

to

assign causality

to technical

adjustments

in

shipping patterns

and

does not

go

far

enough

in

looking

at the social

relationships

between

American

and

British merchants.

Albion

says

that

New Yorkmerchants

made

two

improvements

to

transat-

lantic

shipping

that

promoted

urban

growth.

The

first

and

most

important

advance involved the

packet ships

that carried

passengers,

mail,

and

freight

across

the

ocean.

In

1818,

the Black

Ball line

began regular packet

service

between New

York

and

London. Albion

is

interested

in

how the Black Ball's

greatest

innovation-the introduction

of

regularly

scheduled

sailing

times-

made

shipping

more

predictable

and resulted

in

its

growth.

With the Black

Ball line's

success,

other

packet

lines were

founded. Because most of

them

made

New Yorktheir

western

terminus,

the

city

boomed.

Any packet

line that

started

up

later,

Albion

claims,

almost

had

to

operate

from New York or

face

a

competitive disadvantage.

Albion notes

in

passing

that the Black Ball line

was

founded

by

members of an

extended

Quaker

family,

the

Wrights

and the

Thompsons, who had some members in New York and some in Britain and

who

cooperated closely

in

creating

this transatlantic

enterprise.

But he

pays

little attention

to this

social

dimension;

as he saw

it,

the Atlantic world

ended

at the shoreline. As an economic

historian

influenced

by

classical economic

theory,

as

a

conservative scholar

writing

during

the

Great

Depression,

Albion

was

concerned

about

making

capitalism

more

orderly

and

predictable.

The

introduction

of scheduled

departures

was the

precisely

the kind of rationaliz-

ing

business

adjustment

to which Albion

was attuned.

The

second

improvement

was the

triangular

cotton trade created

by

New

York merchants such

as Anson

G.

Phelps.

In

the

1820s,

New York

shipping

lines

began carrying

cotton

bales

from the southern U.S.

to

Liverpool,

Le

Havre,

and other

European

ports.

There,

the

cotton

was

exchanged

for

manufactured

goods,

which were

transported

to New York.

From

New

York,



8/10

HOOD

/

In

Retrospect

177

coastal

packets

transported

finished

products

to southern

ports.

According

to

Albion,

this

triangular

cotton

trade

is remarkable because

New York mer-

chants

turned what should

have been a direct trade between

Europe

and

the

South into a three-way commerce that passed through New York. This

abnormal

arrangement

exploiting

southern

business

passivity

was

highly

profitable

for

New

Yorkers:

They actually

took over

a

large

share of

the

South's

commercial

activity (pp.

95-96).

This

explanation

for

the rise of New York

City

occupies only

a third of

the

text.

The rest

of the book

surveys

the

port's

various other activities. There are

chapters

about

New

York's dominance

of

the

coastal

trade,

its involvement

with the Latin

American

and Chinese

trades,

the

practices

of the

city's

mercantile houses, government regulation of the harbor, the advent of

steamships,

the

East

River

shipyards,

immigration,

and

other

topics.

No

wonder a

1971

reprinting

of the book

changed

its

title to The Use

of

New York

Port

n an effort to reflect

its

contents

more

accurately.10

But even

though

these

ancillary

subjects

take

up

the

bulk of the

monograph,

Albion's discussion of

them

is

not

compelling

and

need

not detain us

from

considering

his

analysis

of New York's

emergence.

Albion's reliance

on technical

sailing improvements

as

an

explanatory

device

to account for

the rise

of New York

is

mechanical.

The

problem

with

this

emphasis

on the

packet

service and the cotton trade is that it

exaggerates

the

possibilities

of

purposeful

decisions aimed

at

controlling

economic envi-

ronments

and misses

the

importance

of

merchants' social

relationships.

The

ascendancy

of social

history

in

recent decades

has

provided

a

different

lens

for

seeing

the

rise of New York

than

the

classical economics

lens

that Albion

employed.

Even

though

American

social historians continue

to

concentrate

on the

lower-

and middle-orders

and to

neglect

elites,

new British

scholarship

on the

Atlantic world

prior

to the nineteenth

century

offers

a different

approach to analyzing the problem of the rise of New York.Britishhistorians

such as

P.J.

Cain and

A.G.

Hopkins,

David

Hancock,

David Harris

Sacks,

and

H.V.

Bowen have

recently

revised the older

interpretation

of the seventeenth-

and

eighteenth-century

British

Empire

as

a

discrete

political

and

military

unit-an

empire

of

goods

and

an

empire

of

paper.

At

a time when

government

infrastructure and communications were

relatively

primitive,

these scholars concentrate

on

the

more

informal,

intangible

sinews that held

the

empire

together.

As

they

see

it,

the

pre-nineteenth-century Empire

was

a

commercial, cultural,

and social

body

that was reinforced

and

legitimated by

a

set

of

cultural

values,

social

relationships,

and

business connections shared

by

elites

in

Britain

and

overseas.11

The

possibilities

of

applying

this new

approach

to New

York

City

can be

glimpsed by making

use of

Albion's

example

of the Black

Ball

packet.

What is

important

from the

standpoint

of



9/10

178

REVIEWS IN AMERICAN HISTORY

/

JUNE

1999

the social

history

of elites is less

the

innovation of

regular sailing

times than

the fact

that this innovation was made

by

a

web

of

merchants-an

extended

Quaker

family,

the

Wrights

and

Thompsons-stretching

across the Atlantic

between the United States and Great Britain and tying New York and

metropolitan

British

together. By conceiving

of the Atlantic

world as

a

cultural

and social

phenomenon

rather as

a

watery

second

frontier,

we

may

ask

what it was about the social

relationships

between

merchants

in

New

York

and

those

in

Britain that

gave

New York a

competitive advantage

over

rival

seaports.12

Albion's

explanation

also

disregards

the role of the state. As a conservative

economic

historian who was convinced of the

free

market

system's

para-

mount importance, Albion discounted the possibility that government ac-

tions,

particularly involving

warfare

and

nation

building, shaped

economic

relationships

and urban

growth.

Albion saw

war

and

society

as

separate

entities

rather than

as interconnected

phenomena.

He

thought

that

economic

growth

resulted from actions taken

by

the

private

sector.

This

emphasis

on

peacetime

economic

growth

is evident

in

the

periodization

of

The

Rise

of

New

YorkPort: it

begins

after the

War of

1812

and

ends before the Civil

War,

an

unusually

peaceful

interlude

in this

country's

turbulent

history.

Since Albion wrote

TheRise

of

New York

Port,

there has been no

reinterpre-

tation of this

problem.

A revised

analysis

of the

emergence

of New York

might

retain

Albion's

comparative

framework

of

putting

New York

n

the

context

of

Boston,

Philadelphia,

and the other

seaports, yet

extend

the

inquiry

to

the

late

eighteenth century.

It

could then

explore

how the Seven Years

War,

the

Revolutionary

War,

and American nation

building

differentially

affected

mercantile

relationships

between the

leading

American

seaports

and metro-

politan

Britain.

Despite

these

limitations,

there are reasons for scholars

to have a continu-

ing interest in TheRiseofNew YorkPort.First,Albion insists on studying New

York

in

the context of other U.S. cities

and

the

Atlantic

world,

as

he

understood

it.

Though

American

urban historians

import

ideas

from

abroad,

our

frame of reference is much

narrower and even

isolationist,

and we

all

too

rarely

place

our

findings

in

international

perspective.

Second,

Albion demon-

strates

the

importance

of

examining

economic

elites,

a social

group

that

American social historians

have

neglected

in

their almost exclusive focus

on

relatively powerless

subcultures. The

study

of elites is

a

forgotten

area

of

scholarship

that seems

peculiarly

American;

certainly

British

and

French

social historians

do not

neglect

these

groups.

This

powerful historiographical

bias has distorted our

understanding

of

the

inter-relationships

of social

classes

and

identity

groups

and confounded

our

ability

to

comprehend

political

decisions.



10/10

HOOD

/

In

Retrospect

179

Above all

Albion shows

the merit of

asking important questions

and of

tackling

large subjects.

The main reason for The Rise

of

New York

Port's

survival

is that it

explores

a

problem

of

abiding significance,

how and

why

New York

City

became the country'sdominant metropolis. Although Albion's

answer

may

seem

unsatisfactory,

and

although

he does not

go

on to ask

what

the rise of

New Yorkmeant

for the

city

or the

nation,

his book's boldness

and

scope

is

impressive.

It is

refreshing

to encounter a scholar who is

neither

narrow nor defensive.

For

these

reasons,

The

Rise

of

New YorkPort

is

likely

to

be

around

for a

very long

time.

Clifton

Hood,

Department

of

History,

Hobart and William Smith

Colleges,

is

writing a study of New YorkCity's political economy from 1666 to 1987.

1.

John

Walton

Caughey,

Historians'

Choice: Results

of a Poll on

Recently

Published

American

History

and

Biography,

Mississippi Valley

Historical Review 39

(September

1952):

300.

2.

The nature

of

authorship

is an issue

with Albion.

Many

books that list Albion as sole

author were

actually

co-written with his

wife,

Jennie

Barnes

Pope.

It was their

practice

for

Albion to research

a

subject

and write a first draft

and for

Pope

to

produce

a final

manuscript.

The Rise

of

New York

Port,

1815-1860

seems to have been created

in

this

way.

The

title

page

credits Albion

as the author and notes that

the

book

was

produced

with

the

collaboration

of

Jennie

Barnes

Pope, although

the nature

of

this

collaboration is

nowhere

explained.

Later

books credit Albion and

Pope

as co-authors.

John

H.

Kemble,

Maritime

History

in the

Age

of

Albion,

in The Atlantic World

of

Robert

G.

Albion,

ed.

Benjamin

W.

Labaree

(1975),

6.

3. RobertG.

Albion,

Forest nd

Sea

Power:TheTimber roblem

f

the

Royal

Navy,

1652-1862

(1926).

4.

Benjamin

W.

Labaree,

foreword to The

Rise

of

New

York

Port,

1815-1860

by

Robert

G.

Albion

(1939;

1984),

vi.

5.

Labaree,

ed.,

Atlantic

World,

frontispiece,

3-17;

New

York

Times,

August

13,

1983;

Directory of

American

Scholars,

7th

ed.,

vol. 1

(1978):

6.

6.

Josef

W.

Konvitz,

The

Crises

of

Atlantic

Port

Cities,

1880 to

1920,

Comparative

Studies

in

Society

and

History

36

(April

1994):

293-318.

7. Ibid., 295-99.

8.

Kenneth

Wiggins

Porter,

review of The Rise

of

New York

Port,

1815-1860,

by

Robert G.

Albion,

American Historical Review

45

(January

1940):

415.

9. Reverend Samuel

Osgood,

New York n the

Nineteenth

Century:

A

DiscourseDelivered

Before

heNew

York

Historical

ociety

n Its

Sixty-second nniversary,

ovember

0,

1866

(1867):

5. See also Theodore

Roosevelt,

New York

(1918),

xi,

89,

214.

10.

Contemporary

Authors,

New

Revision

Series,

vol. 3

(1981):

17.

11.

P.J.

Cain

and

A.G.

Hopkins,

British

Imperialism:

nnovation and

Expansion

(1993);

David

Hancock,

London

Merchants nd the

Integration f

the

Atlantic

Community,

735-1785

1995);

David

Harris

Sacks,

The

Widening

Gate:

Bristol

and the Atlantic

Economy,

450-1700

(1991);

H.V.

Bowen,

Elites,

Enterprise

nd

the

Making

f

the

BritishOverseas

mpire,

688-1775

1996).

12. The most recent study of the colonial port is Cathy Matson, Merchants & Empire:

Trading

n

ColonialNew York

1998).

Documents

The Rise of New York Port Robert G. Albion