Colony to Superpower II: Can’t Go Wrong with John Jay

Erik writes about the harsh criticism that John Jay received upon returning from Europe on the conclusion of the Jay Treaty.

This was ridiculous. Herring states that Jay probably gave up more than he had to on these issues. Maybe. But this was the United States. And England was England. To think that we could simply state terms to Europe, as we did over and over again in these years, was totally absurd but typical of the arrogance in which the United States carried itself, even from the nation’s infancy. Herring defends Jay as well saying “The most likely alternative to the treaty was a continued state of crisis and conflict that could have led to war” and “Rarely has a treaty so bad on the face of it produced such positive results.”

Quite right. Public and elite opinion in the early Republic seemed to swing back and forth between raw terror that either Britain or France were on the verge of destroying the United States, and crazed optimism about the ability of the United States to dictate terms to and win wars against the major European powers. This isn’t terribly surprising; revolutionary regimes tend to have erratic foreign policies in their early years, and the leaders of the United States were self-conscious revolutionaries. At the same time, I wonder if the temporal proximity of the French Revolution to the American, and the very real differences between those two revolutions, didn’t serve to push US foreign policy in a more conservative direction. Interestingly enough, Herring credits Nelson’s victory at the Nile with making France amenable to negotiations with the United States.

Erik is also correct that the biggest omission from this chapter is an in-depth discussion of the Alien and Sedition Acts. Perhaps Herring considered these to be a domestic issues, but I can’t really see why. Without the pressure provided by the war between France and Britain, and the consequent division of the American political elite, I doubt that the Acts would ever have come about. Of course, it’s also kind of interesting to follow the self-immolation of the Federalist Party during Adams presidency. I had not previously knwn that Timothy Pickering is the only Secretary of State in US history to have been fired, rather than resign. In retrospect, Hamilton’s machinations against Adams really do seem foolish and short-sighted. Without the divisions in the Federalists, Adams probably would have beaten Jefferson in 1800.

I’ve heard it argued, and I think it’s correct, that the 1790s, the 1950s, and the 2000s are the only three eras in US history in which foreign policy played a genuinely critical role in American political competition. It’s too early to say whether Herring holds to this position, and I suppose further that the question depends on whether one terms relations with Native Americans as “foreign policy”. Then again, I suppose it could be argued that there was a broad consensus in the American political elite on the Native American question (kill them and take their land), and as such disputes weren’t really politically salient. It’ll be interesting to see how Herring treats this.

Finally, from the “that probably didn’t mean then what it sounds like now” file, Herring quotes an American official saying “The affairs of Europe rain riches on us, and it is as much as we can do to find dishes to catch the golden shower.” Indeed.