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Competition in coastal waters: customs sloops and Admiralty cruisers in eighteenth-century Britain

ABSTRACT This article explores the relationship between the Customs and the Admiralty as agents of anti-smuggling prevention and policing in British coastal waters during the long-eighteenth century. This relationship was, at first glance, embedded in an ostensible rhetoric of co-operation. In reality, however, the various actors operated in stark competition to each other, occasioned by monetary rewards. It is argued here that such competition was seen as beneficial for the coastal duty by central administrators. Competition was the easiest means to keeping transaction costs – in the form of fraud, collusion, and negligence – low. The agenda of central departments was thus ultimately served best by encouraging rivalry over co-operation. This line of inquiry also serves to complicate typically simplistic representations of smuggling which see the efforts of state actors unanimously pitched against the smugglers. Various central institutions followed their own agenda in the anti-smuggling business, and it was the task of the Customs Board to reconcile such agendas into a coherent effort. The present case offers a suitable field to explore this complexity. It also speaks to wider concerns regarding the eighteenth-century state, such as the nature of inter-departmental rivalry and the role of contractual arrangements between private interests and the state.