From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (4 page)

Paine's call for independence makes clear the centrality of foreign policy to the birth of the American republic. His arguments hinged on estimates of the importance of the colonies in the international system of the late eighteenth century. They suggest the significant role foreign policy would assume in the achievement of independence and the adoption of a new constitution. They set forth basic principles that would shape U.S. foreign policy for years to come. They hint at the essential characteristics of what would become a distinctively American approach to foreign policy. The Revolutionary generation held to an expansive
vision, a certainty of their future greatness and destiny. They believed themselves a chosen people and brought to their interactions with others a certain self-righteousness and disdain for established practice. They saw themselves as harbingers of a new world order, creating forms of governance and commerce that would appeal to peoples everywhere and change the course of world history. "We have it in our power to begin the world over again," Paine wrote. Idealistic in their vision, in their actions Americans demonstrated a pragmatism born perhaps of necessity that helped ensure the success of their revolution and the promulgation of the Constitution.
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From their foundation, the American colonies were an integral part of the British Empire and hence of an Atlantic trading community. According to the dictates of mercantilism, then the dominant school of economic thought, the colonies supplied the mother country with timber, tobacco, and other agricultural products and purchased its manufactured goods. But the Americans also broke from prescribed trade patterns. New England and New York developed an extensive illicit commerce with French Canada, even while Britain was at war with France. They also opened a lucrative commerce with Dutch and French colonies in the West Indies, selling food and other necessities and buying sugar more cheaply than it could be acquired from the British West Indies. Americans benefited in many ways from Britain's mercantilist Navigation Acts, but they staunchly resisted efforts to curb their trade with the colonies of other European nations. They became champions of free trade well before the Revolution.
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The American colonies were also part of a Eurocentric "international" community. Formed at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, this new system sought to end years of bloody religious strife by enlarging the stature and role of the nation-state. Based in part on concepts developed by Hugo Grotius, the Dutch political theorist and father of international law, Westphalia established principles such as the sovereign equality of states, the territorial integrity of the state, non-interference by one state in the
domestic affairs of others, peaceful resolution of disputes, and the obligation to abide by international agreements. After Westphalia, diplomacy and war came under the purview of civil rather than religious authority. A corps of professional diplomats emerged to handle interstate relations. A code was produced to guide their conduct. François de Callières's classic manual of the eighteenth-century diplomatic art affirmed that negotiations should be conducted in good faith, honorably, and without deceit—"a lie always leaves a drop of poison behind." On the other hand, spies were essential for information gathering, and bribes—although that word was not used—were encouraged. Negotiation required keen powers of observation, concentration on the task at hand, sound judgment, and presence of mind, de Callières explained. But a "gift presented in the right spirit, at the right moment, by the right person, may act with tenfold power upon him who receives it." It was also important to cultivate the ladies of the court, for "the greatest events have sometimes followed the toss of a fan or the nod of a head."
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Far from eliminating war, the new system simply changed the reasons for fighting and the means of combat. Issues of war and peace were decided on the basis of national interest as defined by the monarch and his court. Nation-states acted on the basis of realpolitik rather than religious considerations, changing sides in alliances when it suited their foreign policy goals.
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Rulers deliberately restricted the means and ends of combat. They had seen the costs and dangers of unleashing the passions of their people. They had made substantial investments in their armies, needed them for domestic order, and were loath to risk them in battle. Once involved in war, they sought to avoid major battles, employed professional armies in cautious strategies of attrition, used tactics emphasizing maneuver and fortification, and held to unwritten rules protecting civilian lives and property. The aim was to sustain the balance of power rather than destroy the enemy. War was to be conducted with minimal intrusion into the lives of the people. Indeed, that master practitioner of limited war, Prussia's Frederick the Great, once observed that war was not a success if most people knew it was going on.

In the international system of the eighteenth century, Spain, the Netherlands, and Sweden, the great powers of an earlier era, were in decline, while France, Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia were ascending. Separated by a narrow channel of water, Britain and France
were especially keen rivals and fought five major wars between 1689 and 1776. The American colonies became entangled in most of them.

The Seven Years' War, or French and Indian War, as Americas have known it, has been aptly called the "War That Made America."
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That conflict originated in the colonies with fighting between Americans and French in the region between the Allegheny Mountains and the Mississippi River. It spread to Europe, where coalitions gathered around traditional rivals Britain and France, and to colonial possessions in the Caribbean and West Indies, the Mediterranean, the Southwest Pacific, and South Asia. Winston Churchill without too much exaggeration called it the "first world war." After early setbacks in Europe and America, Britain won a decisive victory and emerged the world's greatest power, wresting from France Canada and territory in India and from Spain the territories of East and West Florida, a global empire surpassing that of Rome.
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As is often the case in war, victory came at high cost. Americans had played a major part in Britain's success and envisioned themselves as equal partners in the empire. Relieved of the French and Spanish menace, they depended less on Britain's protection and sought to enjoy the fruits of their military success. The war exhausted Britain financially. Efforts to recoup its costs and to pay the expenses of a vastly expanded empire—by closing off the trans-Appalachian region to settlement, enforcing long-standing trade restrictions, and taxing the Americans for their own defense—sparked revolutionary sentiment among the colonists and their first efforts to band together in common cause. The disparate colonies attempted to apply economic pressures in the form of nonimportation agreements. Twelve colonies sent delegates to a first Continental Congress in Philadelphia in the fall of 1774 to discuss ways to deal with British "oppression." A second Continental Congress assembled in May 1775 as shots were being fired outside Boston.

American foreign relations began before independence was declared. Once war was a reality, colonial leaders instinctively looked abroad for help. England's rival, France, also took a keen interest in events in America, dispatching an agent to Philadelphia in August 1775 to size up the prospects for rebellion. The Americans were not certain how Europe might respond to a revolution. John Adams of Massachusetts once speculated, with the moral self-righteousness that typified American attitudes toward European diplomacy, that it might take generous bribes, a gift for intrigue, and contact with "some of the Misses and Courtezans in
keeping of the statesmen in France" to secure foreign assistance.
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About the time French envoy Julien-Alexandre Ochard de Bonvouloir arrived in December, the Continental Congress appointed a Committee of Secret Correspondence to explore the possibility of foreign aid. The committee sounded out Bonvouloir on French willingness to sell war supplies. Encouraged by the response, it sent Connecticut merchant Silas Deane to France to arrange for the purchase of arms and other equipment. Three days before Deane arrived in France, Congress approved a Declaration of Independence designed to bring the American colonies into a union that could establish ties with other nations.
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Whatever place the Declaration has since assumed in the folklore of American nationhood, its immediate and urgent purpose was to make clear to Europeans, especially the French, the colonies' commitment to independence.
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Although their behavior at times suggests otherwise, the Americans were not naive provincials. Their worldview was shaped by experiences as the most important colony of the British Empire, particularly in the most recent war. Colonial leaders were also familiar with European writings on diplomacy and commerce. Americans often expressed moral indignation at the depravity of the European balance-of-power system, but they observed it closely, understood its workings, and sought to exploit it. They turned for assistance to a vengeful France recently humiliated by England and presumably eager to weaken its rival by helping its colony gain independence. Painfully aware of their need for foreign aid, they were also profoundly wary of political commitments to European nations. Conveniently forgetting their own role in provoking the Seven Years' War, they worried that such entanglements would drag them into the wars that seemed constantly to wrack Europe. They feared that, as in 1763, their interests would be ignored in the peacemaking. Americans had followed debates in England on the value of connections with Continental powers. They adapted to their own use the arguments of those Britons who urged avoiding European conflicts and retaining maximum freedom of action. "It is the true interest of America to steer clear of European contentions," Paine advised in
Common Sense.
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Americans also agreed that their ties with Europe should be mainly commercial. Through their experience in the British Empire, they had embraced freedom of trade before the publication of Adam Smith's classic
Wealth of Nations
in 1776. They saw the opportunity to trade with all nations on an equal basis as being in their best interests and indeed essential for their economic well-being. Independence would permit them to "shake hands with the world—live at peace with the world—and trade to any market," according to Paine.
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The enticement of trade would secure European support against Britain. Drawing upon French and Scottish Enlightenment philosophers, some Americans believed that replacement of the corrupt, oppressive, and warlike systems of mercantilism and power politics would produce a more peaceful world. The free interchange of goods would demonstrate that growth in the wealth of one nation would bring an increase for all. The interests of nations were therefore compatible rather than in conflict. The civilizing effect of free trade and the greater understanding among peoples that would come from increased contact would promote harmony among nations.

Keenly aware of their present weakness, the American revolutionaries envisioned future greatness. They embraced views dating back to John Winthrop and the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony of a city upon a hill that would serve as a beacon to peoples across the world. They saw themselves conducting a unique experiment in self-government that foreshadowed a new era in world politics. As a young man, John Adams of Massachusetts proclaimed the founding of the American colonies as "the opening of a grand scheme and design in Providence for the elimination of the ignorant, and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth." Americans had gloried in the triumph of the British Empire in 1763. When that empire, in their view, had failed them, they were called into being, in the words of patriot Ezra Stiles, to "rescue & reinthrone the hoary venerable head of the most glorious empire on earth." They believed they were establishing an empire without a metropolis, based on "consent, not coercion," that could serve as an "asylum for mankind," as Paine put it, and inspire others to break the shackles of despotism. Through free trade and enlightened diplomacy they would create a new world order.
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Even while Deane was sailing to France in pursuit of money and urgently needed supplies, another committee appointed by Congress was drafting a treaty to be offered to European nations embracing these first
precepts of American foreign policy. The so-called Model Treaty, or Plan of 1776, was written largely by John Adams. It would guide treaty-making for years to come. In crafting the terms, Adams and his colleagues agreed as a fundamental principle that the nation must avoid any commitments that would entangle it in future European wars. Indeed, Adams specifically recommended that in dealing with France no
political
connections should be formed. America must not submit to French authority or form military ties; it should receive no French troops. France would be asked to renounce claims to territory in North America. In return, the Americans would agree not to oppose French reconquest of the West Indies and would not use an Anglo-French war to come to terms with England. Both signatories would agree in the event of a general war not to make a separate peace without notifying the other six months in advance.

The lure to entice France and other Europeans to support the rebellious colonies would be commerce. Since trade with America was a key element of Britain's power, its rivals would not pass up the opportunity to capture it. The Model Treaty thus proposed that trade should not be encumbered by tariffs or other restrictions. Looking to the time when as a neutral nation they might seek to trade with nations at war, Americans also proposed a set of principles advocated by leading neutral nations and proponents of free trade. Neutrals should be free in wartime to trade with all belligerents in all goods except contraband. Contraband should be defined narrowly. Free ships would make free goods; that is to say, cargo aboard ships not at war should be free from confiscation. The Model Treaty was breathtaking in some of its assumptions and principles. Congress approved it in September 1776 and elected Thomas Jefferson of Virginia (who declined to serve) and elder statesman Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia to join Deane in assisting with its negotiation and bringing France into the war. The Americans thus entered European diplomacy as heralds of a new age.
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