Research Catalog
Contraband : Louis Mandrin and the making of a global underground / Michael Kwass.
- Title
- Contraband : Louis Mandrin and the making of a global underground / Michael Kwass.
- Author
- Kwass, Michael.
- Publication
- Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2014.
Items in the Library & Off-site
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1 Item
| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Text | Request in advance | HV6248.M278 K93 2014 | Off-site |
Details
- Description
- 457 pages : illustrations; 25
- Summary
- Louis Mandrin led a gang of bandits who brazenly smuggled contraband into eighteenth-century France. Michael Kwass brings new life to the legend of this Gallic Robin Hood and the thriving underworld he helped to create. Decades before the storming of the Bastille, surging world trade excited a revolution in consumption that transformed the French kingdom. This book exposes the dark side of this early phase of globalization, revealing hidden connections between illicit commerce, criminality, and popular revolt. France's economic system was tailor-made for an enterprising outlaw like Mandrin. As French subjects began to crave colonial products, Louis XIV lined the royal coffers by imposing a state monopoly on tobacco from America and an embargo on brilliantly colored calico cloth from India. Vigorous black markets arose through which traffickers fed these exotic goods to eager French consumers. Flouting the law with unparalleled panache, Mandrin captured widespread public attention to become a symbol of a defiant underground.--
- Subjects
- Genre/Form
- Biographies
- History
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Processing Action (note)
- committed to retain
- Contents
- The globalization of European consumption -- The king intervenes -- The making of a smuggler -- The shadow economy -- Rebel rebel -- Triumph -- The would-be general -- Captured -- The execution of Louis Mandrin -- Mandrin into print -- Smuggling in the enlightenment -- Revolution.
- ISBN
- 9780674726833 (hardcover : alk. paper)
- LCCN
- ^^2013032888
- OCLC
- 856861281
- SCSB-11759956
- Owning Institutions
- Harvard Library