Chapter One
Imperial Crisis, Revolution, and a New Nation, 1763-1803

David Narrett

The immediate origins of U.S. foreign relations lie in the period following the Seven Years' War. It was then that American colonists invoked English constitutional principles in opposition to the mother country's new taxation measures and stringent customs regulation. Parliament's Coercive Acts of 1774 galvanized colonial protests to new heights, triggering the meeting of the First Continental Congress. While not calling for independence, Congress resolved on October 14, 1774 that Parliament could not legitimately bind the colonies' "external commerce" unless such regulations worked "to the mutual benefit of both countries." This defense of "American rights" was soon buttressed by the Continental Association - local committees dedicated to enforcing the non-importation of British goods (Ford et al. 1904-1937, 1, pp. 66, 68-69). An autonomous American commercial policy was evident before the first shots were fired at Lexington on April 19, 1775.

It is difficult to overstate the radical change in American colonial perspectives that occurred from the British conquest of Canada in 1760 to the congressional resolves of 1774. In 1760, Benjamin Franklin rejoiced at a shared imperial triumph: "I have long been of Opinion, that the Foundations of the future Grandeur and Stability of the British Empire, lie in America; and tho', like other Foundations, they are low and little seen, they are nevertheless, broad and Strong enough to support the greatest Political Structure Human Wisdom ever yet erected" (Franklin to Lord Kames, Jan. 3, 1760, in Labaree et al. 1959-2017, 9, p. 7). Fourteen years later, Franklin described British foes of American rights as being so ignorant of the colonies that they "appear to be no better acquainted with their History or Constitution than they are with the Inhabitants of the Moon" (Franklin to Lord Buckinghamshire, Apr. 2, 1774, in Labaree et al. 1959-2017, 21, p. 177). Paradoxically, U.S. foreign relations were born in conflict against imperial Britain, while also being shaped by British colonial foundations, which influenced the fledgling nation's engagement in continental and Atlantic spheres in both war and peace.

A major historical debate in early American foreign relations involves the character of nationhood - how the United States seemingly followed paths to independence, sovereignty, and power that moved inexorably toward continental empire, the spread of republican institutions, and commercial liberalism on the world stage. Robert Kagan, one recent proponent of this view, writes: "At America's birth . foreign policy and national identity were intimately bound together, and they would remain so for the next two centuries" (2006, p. 42). Kagan sees the American pursuit of empire stirred by a "revolutionary ideology," which made "the young American republic dangerous in the eyes of others," whether those "others" were European monarchies or Indian peoples who stood in the way (2006, p. 4).

Eliga Gould offers a quite different analysis than Kagan's by emphasizing how the United States began as a "protean and contingent polity" that struggled to gain international respect and to "appear worthy of peaceful relations with other nations" (2012, pp. 12-13). From still another perspective, early American foreign relations may be explained through the problem of union - beginning with the difficulty that Great Britain faced when tightening control over American colonies which viewed themselves as equal members of the empire. The United States necessarily had to find new federative structures to endure as a nation, let alone to acquire power in continental and maritime spheres. As Gould and Peter S. Onuf jointly explain: "The dialectic of whole and part, of diversity in union, was central to constructing a viable constitutional order for the United States . The great question was whether identification with Britain could be redirected toward 'America,' and whether an alliance of state-republics could effectively replace, and fulfill the promise of, the imperial connection" (2005, p. 7). The American Union's gradual accretion of power spelled retreat for Native peoples, especially as the latter lost European imperial support (Sadosky 2009, p. 8). Moreover, U.S. territorial expansion raised the issue of slavery's growth and attendant sectional rivalry. The Southern states' dependence on slavery had its own imperial impetus. Slaveholders were not only eager for new lands but also wary that escaped blacks would find refuge in bordering foreign or Indian territories.

These and other important issues in the history of American foreign relations from 1763 to the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 may be examined in four main periods: imperial crisis (1763-1775), revolution and war (1775-1783), postwar struggles under the Articles of Confederation (1783-1788), and the evolution of national policy under the presidencies of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson (1789-1803). These periods should be considered as guideposts within a broad and multifaceted story.

The Imperial Crisis (1763-1775)

While the Stamp Act crisis of 1765 centered on the issue of Parliamentary taxation, it also exhibited colonial disquiet with British policies for the North American interior. The Revenue or Sugar Act (1764) and the Stamp Act mandated that tax revenues be applied toward the growing cost of colonial defense and administration. In early 1763, about 8000 British soldiers were stationed in frontier outposts such as Fort Pitt and Detroit as well as in Canada (Shy 1965, p. 114). Small garrisons were soon established in East and West Florida. ("The Floridas" - as Britons dubbed those colonies - came into the empire by the English acquisition of former Spanish and French territories as stipulated in the Treaty of Paris of 1763.) Colonials along the Atlantic seaboard viewed Great Britain - and not themselves - as bound to pay for regular troops in these areas. Colonial opinion on this point was little affected by Pontiac's War (1763-1765), a violent upsurge of Indian resistance against the British presence in the Ohio country and the Great Lakes region.

Rejecting Parliamentary taxation on constitutional grounds, colonial declarations of rights expressed a particular sense of responsibility within the empire. John Dickinson's "Farmer's" Letters of 1767, written in response to the Townshend Acts, contended that Americans merited special dispensation from the mother country because the colonies were obligated to import British manufactures under the Navigation Acts. Moreover, taxes that drained American pocketbooks would necessarily weaken the British economy, which depended in large measure on transatlantic trade. Colonials wanted economic reciprocity on their own terms, not imperial dictation. The non-importation movement encouraged ordinary colonists as well as elites to express a shared pride in American identity. Alarmed by colonial protests, royal ministers such as George Grenville and Charles Townshend could not fathom why American subjects should be so adamant against shouldering any tax burden on behalf of an empire that protected them.

Historians have taken diverse approaches to explaining the escalating tensions between Britain and the colonies. During the 1960s, Bernard Bailyn illuminated the Revolution's ideological origins by analyzing radical Whig perceptions that made colonials acutely protective of their liberties (Bailyn 1967). Theodore Draper has probed "the struggle for power" between an empire bent on upholding metropolitan authority and colonies forging their own path and breaking away from "external restraints and prohibitions" (1995, p. 516). In truth, there was a complex interplay between American ideology and interest. One should also emphasize political fissures within both Great Britain and its North American colonies. A minority in the British governing elite sharply criticized ministerial policy in 1774-1775, while many colonials were either ambivalent or opposed to the movement toward independence.

British trans-Appalachian policy is a significant and yet often overlooked element of the imperial crisis. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 established a provisional boundary line between colonial settlement zones east of the Appalachians and Indian "hunting grounds" to the west. The Proclamation, which was issued during Pontiac's War, reflected a concerted British attempt to stabilize North American frontiers and to prevent the recurrence of colonial-Indian conflicts that would require royal military intervention. The King's government deliberately replaced General Jeffrey Amherst, British commander-in-chief in North America, whom the ministry blamed for precipitating Pontiac's War by his ham-fisted management of Indian relations (Anderson 2000, pp. 552-553).

Anglo-American ambitions were hardly stilled by the Proclamation Line. The crown itself had set a precedent for provincial expansionists by authorizing a huge land grant in 1749 to the Ohio Company - a partnership of wealthy Virginians who intended to promote settlement at the Forks of the...