During the eighteenth century, the trans-Appalachian region was occupied and contested by Indigenous nations, early squatters, land speculators, war veterans, and imperial traders. Settlement often preceded legal ownership, and sovereignty emerged only after prolonged conflict and negotiation. Why did the trans-Appalachian region, specifically, the territory west of the Proclamation Line of 1763 and east of the Mississippi River, become American rather than British, Spanish, French, or independent? Scholarship emphasized a process shaped by imperial collapse, settler pressure, federal land policy, indigenous dispossession, and economic integration.
Gruenwald places the economic factor, especially commerce and trade, as the driving force behind America’s westward expansion. Drawing on extensive personal and business correspondence, she shows how Philadelphia merchants traded between Pennsylvania and New Orleans along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and engaged in land speculation both before and after American independence. Their activities in what Gruenwald terms the “Riverine West” helped sustain economic exchange in a politically unstable and often unsafe region, laying an economic foundation for the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.
The first part of the book (Chapters 1–3) examines the colonial period. Commerce in the Riverine West predated the arrival of Philadelphia merchants; French settlers controlled New Orleans and traded with Native Americans, while Spanish and British settlers also participated in it. It was during the Seven Years’ War, when Philadelphia surpassed Boston as a port, that Philadelphia merchants shifted their attention from West Indian trade to supplying British garrisons, trading furs with Native Americans, and seeking land grants in the West.
Chapters 2 and 3 provide a richly detailed reconstruction of the rise and eventual failure of Bayton, Wharton & Morgan’s western ventures, which I find most engaging. In trade, the partnership firm continually reassessed political conditions and adjusted its alliances with the British, Spanish, French, and Indigenous actors. Personal relationships with British military leaders secured supply contracts, while profit-sharing arrangements with intermediaries familiar with Spanish governors enabled them to obtain business permission in New Orleans. They faced competition from French settlers, who had a longstanding influence on the Mississippi River through marriage and social networks with Native Americans, as well as lower transportation costs in Illinois. Although the Riverine West remained unsettled and dangerous, the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers were relatively secure trade corridors through which they could navigate. Land speculation, however, proved far less successful. The firm’s attempts to secure crown land grants were constrained by limited political influence in London and rivalry among colonies, which ultimately contributed to the dissolution of the partnership.
The second part of the book (Chapters 4–6) covers the period from independence to 1803. Although Philadelphia merchants now cultivated relationships with the Continental Army rather than British troops, they still relied on Spanish officials in New Orleans, often through personal intermediaries. One difference from the colonial period was the increased vertical integration of merchant operations. Partnership firms such as Reed & Forde owned mills in eastern Pennsylvania to reduce transportation costs and maintained stores along the lower Mississippi to hedge against uncertainty. Locations such as Natchez and portage sites around navigation obstacles became local commercial hubs, contributing to regional economic development, which has been pointed out by Hoyt Bleakley and Jeffrey Lin (“Portage and Path Dependence.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 127, no. 2 [2012]: 587–644). Another difference from the colonial period was that Reed & Forde had a relatively greater success in land speculation, particularly in Virginia and central Pennsylvania, marketing land to buyers in neighboring states and the United Kingdom.
After Pinckney’s Treaty in 1795 secured the new nation’s navigation of the entire Mississippi River, the trade circuit was completed. The market power Philadelphia merchants had derived from personal networks with the Spanish in New Orleans diminished as entry barriers fell. Competing with merchants from New York and Baltimore, Philadelphians shipped flour, whiskey, provisions, dry goods, and timber, as well as imported wine from London and France, to New Orleans, where they traded for indigo and passenger services. Return voyages might include stops in the West Indies, exchanging flour for coffee.
While the book offers a rich and persuasive reconstruction of merchant activity in the Riverine West, several issues merit further consideration. The surviving correspondence itself makes it difficult for Gruenwald to establish the extent of merchants’, especially Philadelphia merchants’, influence in Riverine West—a key requirement for sustaining the book’s claim that commerce and trade, rather than warfare and political conflicts, were the driving forces behind America’s westward expansion. Second, the land Reed & Forde speculated in appears, based on the evidence presented, largely east of the Proclamation Line of 1763, complicating efforts to assess their role in the Riverine West itself. Third, existing scholarship like Farley Grubb (“U.S. Land Policy: Founding Choices and Outcomes, 1781–1802.” In Founding Choices: American Economic Policy in the 1790s, edited by Douglas Irwin and Richard Sylla, 259–89. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011) underscores the importance of federal land policy in westward expansion. The analysis of Philadelphia merchants’ involvement in land speculation after independence would benefit from more evidence on the sources and destinations of land transactions—whether land was acquired through private warrants, state land offices, or federal sales after the Land Ordinance of 1785. Fourth, Gruenwald mentions in passing the use of bills of exchange in long-distance trade. Further discussion of these financial instruments would strengthen the case for merchant influence, particularly given Philadelphia’s well-developed financial market.
Despite these caveats, Gruenwald provides vivid portraits of commercial life in the Riverine West before the Louisiana Purchase. The book will be of particular value to readers interested in how merchants conducted business in the eighteenth century. Larry Neal (The Forgotten Financiers of the Louisiana Purchase: European Bankers, the US, and the Rise of International Finance. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) shows how international financiers behaved in the midst of the United States and France during the Louisiana Purchase. Gruenwald’s study invites speculation about connections between international financiers and prominent Philadelphia merchants. Observing how Philadelphia merchants involved in the Riverine West may have shaped international financiers’ and European confidence in U.S. bonds backed by land and trade on both banks of the Mississippi River.
