Revolutionary Negotiations: Indians, Empires, and Diplomats in the Founding of America

Notes

Notes Abbreviations AFC Adams Family Correspondence ASP-FA American State Papers: Foreign A√airs ASP-IA American State Papers: Indian A√airs DHFFC Documentary History of the First Federal Congress DHRC Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution EAID Early American Indian Documents: Treaties and Laws, 1607–1789 EN The Emerging Nation: A Documentary History of the Foreign Relations of the United States under the Articles of Confederation, 1780–1789 JCC Journals of the Continental Congress LC Library of Congress LDC Letters of Delegates to Congress PBF Papers of Benjamin Franklin PCC Papers of the Continental Congress PGW-PS Papers of George Washington: Presidential Series PJA Papers of John Adams PJM Papers of James Madison PTJ Papers of Thomas Je√erson TJW Thomas Je√erson Writings Introduction 1. Hubert Védrine used the term hyperpuissance, or ‘‘hyperpower,’’ often in public discussions in 1999 to denote the complex of military, economic, and cultural power perceived to be wielded by the United States, at times without the consent of other world powers. ‘‘I believe that since 1992 the word ‘superpower’ is no longer su≈cient to describe the United States. That’s why I use the term ‘hyperpower,’ which American media think is aggressive,’’ Védrine said in November 1999. The United States’ deployment of preponderant military power against Serbia during the 1999 Kosovo War, in concert with the seemingly unstoppable force of economic and cultural 218 Notes to Pages 1–2 globalization in the late 1990s, had Védrine and other French leaders, including President Jacques Chirac, on edge. Védrine opined (again in November 1999) that ‘‘the willingness of the United States to accept with anybody, and particularly with Europe , partnership that is anything but momentary or limited, and to move from unilateralism to multilateralism, remains to be demonstrated. . . . We cannot accept a politically unipolar world, nor a culturally uniform world, nor the unilateralism of a single hyperpower.’’ For all quotes, and context, see Whitney, ‘‘France Presses for a Power Independent of the U.S.’’ Needless to say, the use of the term ‘‘hyperpower’’ to describe the United States continued in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, although with a somewhat di√erent context—and more contentious atmosphere—than that of the discussions of 1999–2000. While these discussions and the developments that inform them were ongoing during the composition of this book and continue as it goes to press, what remains interesting to this historian is the fact that the American situation vis-à-vis Europe (and the rest of the world) at the beginning of the twenty-first century is arguably the diametric opposite to that at the end of the eighteenth. 2. Key to this book’s argument is the proposition that the unified sovereignty of the United States of America was an emergent phenomenon. Therefore, I use the plural to describe the nation (‘‘the United States are’’) throughout this book except when I am discussing the United States over the course of its lifespan, when I default to the singular (‘‘the United States is’’). 3. Twentieth-century historiography, through the first decade and a half of the Cold War, stressed the isolationist impulse of American foreign policy, usually finding its origins in the colonial and Revolutionary eras. For samples of works locating the sources of isolationist thought in eighteenth-century America, see Savelle, ‘‘Colonial Origins of American Diplomatic Principles’’; and Savelle, ‘‘The Appearance of an American Attitude toward External A√airs, 1750–1775.’’ See also Bemis, Diplomacy of the American Revolution. For a more subtle reading of the origins of the isolationist impulse—rooted in American understandings of the European system and culminating in George Washington’s Farewell Address of 1796, see Gilbert, To the Farewell Address. During the Vietnam War, the historiography of American foreign policy began to be shaped by the perspectives of the New Left, viewing the history of American engagement with the wider world as driven by a quest for markets and a desire to extend imperial power. A classic statement of this view is the scholarship of William Appleman Williams; see, in particular, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. The most recent rejection of the isolationist interpretation of early American diplomacy is Kagan, Dangerous Nation. 4. An appreciation for the international context of the American Revolution and the era of the American Founding, and a concomitant rejection of the emphasis on isolationism, has quietly increased in acceptance since the 1960s. Diplomatic historians produced a series of detailed monographs demonstrating the...