ABSTRACT
After the renewal of the European war in 1803, American foreign trade Acontinued to flourish. Since Jay's Treaty, the British had treated American neutral commerce with moderation, and American shippers were growing rich on the profits of the re-export trade, primarily from the West Indies. The British government had abandoned its earlier insistence that the Americans should not engage in a trade that they were banned from in peacetime, and American shippers had been allowed to ship goods from the French West Indies to France by means of the 'broken voyage;' American ships first called at an American port before proceeding to Europe. This boom period for America was to end not simply because of far more intrus ive policies by the European belligerents but because of the way that the Democratic-Republican administrations chose to respond to British and French policies.
