Throughout history, merchants assumed many roles outside of their typical commercial one. They often served as diplomats, cultural attachés, translators, and, as Kim M. Gruenwald argues, agents of territorial expansion. Gruenwald’s book entitled Philadelphia Merchants on Western Waters explores the ways in which American merchants played a pivotal part in the expansion of the United States by integrating the Atlantic seaboard economy into what she labels the “Riverine West,” or the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys. By extending American commercial interests into regions controlled by Native Americans, French, and Spanish during the colonial period, merchant firms played an important role as cultural and political brokers, all the while gathering intelligence and contacts. Once the United States became independent, the colonial groundwork paid important dividends as American merchant firms assisted in the appropriation of American lands and the undermining of Eurocentric directives, such as the Spanish closure of the Mississippi to American navigation in 1784. By doing so, the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory in 1803 improved upon, rather than initiated, commercial ties between the Riverine West and Philadelphia.

Philadelphia Merchants on the Western Waters focuses upon the period from the Seven Years War through the Louisiana Purchase, a period in which the Riverine West nominally changed hands many times, creating a rather chaotic political landscape for her economic actors to negotiate. In reconstructing their world, Gruenwald employs an impressive array of primary source material—mostly in the form of correspondence between merchants—in order to understand their place in a vast North American territory claimed by various European powers. Of course, the balance of power in the Riverine West lay in the hands of Native Americans for most of this time period, but Gruenwald demonstrates how land speculation, trade networks, and diplomatic intrigue all undermined Native sovereignty in the region, as merchants became one of the pivotal wedges of American influence. The firms in this story were largely partnerships like Baynton, Warton & Morgan and Reed and Forde; these mercantile firms sought to link the port traffic of Philadelphia with important economic nodes of the Riverine West like Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Natchez, and, of course, New Orleans. As the agents on the ground, merchants drew upon personal connections and an intimate knowledge of the region’s geography to trade in grains, spirits, and furs all along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. This familiarity eventually led them into land speculation, first in the British-held territory of the Ohio and eventually into the borderlands of the Mississippi River. The combination of commerce and land acquisition allowed Philadelphia firms to expand American influence after 1783 and allow the new nation to punch far above its weight in the Riverine West. This became especially important after Spanish authorities closed free navigation on the Mississippi in the post-war period and forced American merchants to improvise and at times bend the rules of international affairs.

At points, Philadelphia Merchants on the Western Waters dives deeply into the weeds of commercial life in the Riverine West, which can make the overall narrative a bit hard to follow. Gruenwald offers a ground-level perspective that demonstrates both the entrepreneurial talent and ambitious plans for economic empire building from Philadelphia’s merchant community. That said, one of her main goals for this book is to solidify the “Riverine West” identity, which is based on “moving downstream and moving between worlds along the most efficient route for goods to travel and having to share that journey with peoples of all nations, including Native American confederacies, because rivals claimed opposite banks” (p. 159). Gruenwald certainly succeeds in this mission, as her blow-by-blow account of Philadelphia’s merchants navigating a shifting geopolitical landscape in the search of stable commercial ties is both comprehensive and persuasive. Readers interested in the ways in which economic and political interests dovetailed during this critical period of American history will find this book useful, as will scholars of territorial expansion, the borderlands, and mercantile history.