With Sails Whitening Every Sea - 9780801452338

With Sails Whitening Every SeaMariners and the Making of an American Maritime Empire\nAuthor(s): Brian Rouleau\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cornell University Press, United States\nImprint: Cornell University Press\nISBN-13: 9780801452338, 978-0801452338\nSynopsis\nMany Americans in the Early Republic era saw the seas as another field for national aggrandizement. With a merchant marine that competed against Britain for commercial supremacy and a whaling fleet that circled the globe, the United States sought a maritime empire to complement its territorial ambitions in North America. In With Sails Whitening Every Sea, Brian Rouleau argues that because of their ubiquity in foreign ports, American sailors were the principal agents of overseas foreign relations in the early republic. Their everyday encounters and more problematic interactionsbarroom brawling, sexual escapades in port-city bordellos, and the performance of blackface minstrel showsshaped how the United States was perceived.