Dramatic shifts in national identity and international relations characterized the Federal period in the new United States of America. Immediately after the Revolution, unencumbered by British colonial navigation laws, American ships embarked for China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and other destinations. Viewing themselves as citizens of a rising imperial state, Americans imported vast quantities of luxury goods and arts, especially porcelain, silks, lacquerware, painting, sculpture, furniture, wallpaper, and textiles. This trade made Asian visual arts and other materials less expensive and more available to all Americans, particularly in the port cities of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, and Salem. A substantial body of scholarship has established that the Early Republic (or Federal period, ca.1783-1820) was the crucial period for the development of American national identity. Because of the emergence of this trade, it was also a foundational period for the emergence of American international identity. As new materials, forms, imagery, and aesthetics arrived, they were absorbed into American visual culture- not as marginal, but as integral to a dominant Neoclassicism. In the American context, scholarship on Neoclassicism typically describes a style that employed Roman Republican motifs to build nationalism in the new country. By going beyond chinoiserie, we may begin to see the Neoclassical aesthetic as incorporating global references and ambitions. Chinese and other Asian motifs and aesthetic approaches became more than a fascination with exoticism, now experienced first-hand by American traders after the Revolution. The visual forms held ideological resonances. Rome and China were great empires-models of power, hegemonic culture, and long-distance commerce for the new American state. By incorporating Chinese and other Asian motifs and aesthetic principles, Neoclassicism expressed the integral place of the new country in worldwide commercial enterprises. This chapter approaches these issues by examining decorative arts in one seaport: Salem, Massachusetts. Examples of textiles, porcelain, and furniture owned by the prominent Derby and Crowninshield merchant families demonstrate the comfortable pairing of forms and motifs drawn from both classical and Asian visual traditions. Both Neoclassical and Asian styles share aesthetic approaches that facilitated their integrations: clean and elegant lines, subtle forms, and geometric shapes. The objects that these wealthy families chose to display in their homes demonstrate that Federal-period Americans blended Roman and Greek Neoclassicism with Asian aesthetics in their homes, dress, and decorative styles. Globally influenced styles and themes eventually permeated American visual culture, becoming signs of experience, social status, and economic success. These international forms help shaped Americans' sense of their place in the world, contributing to the nation's developing identity as a commercial empire.
