France, England, Spain, and the Barbary states all took
advantage
of U.
Revolution and War_nodrm
?
Revolution and War
tempt to aid the Republicans in the election of 17? had reinforced U. S. suspi- cions and helped the Federalists retain power. Jacobin excesses had under-? mined U. S. sympathies for France, while the French government saw the Jay Treaty as yet anotherbetrayal of the Franco-American alliance. In March 1797, the French Directory declared that neutral vessels carrying British goods would be subject to seizure, a step that directly threatened U. S. maritime in- terests. President John Adams sent a diplomatic mission to France to negoti- ate a settlement, but the foreign minister, Charles Talleyrand, refused to see them and sent three agents (known to posterity as X, Y, and Z), to arrange a bribe of $250,000 for himself and a loan of $12 million for the French govern- ment as preconditions for begingnin negotiations. The U. S. commissioners re- jected the terms and the mission accomplished nothing, but news of Talleyrand's actions ignited a storm of protest in the United States, where de- mands grew for a declaration of war. Congress authorized the construction of twelve new warships and initiated plans to increase the regular army as well. Some Federalist leaders tried to use the crisis to discredit the Republican cause, while others entertained hopes of an Anglo-American campaign against the French and Spanish possessions in the Western Hemisphere. 25
These measures were justified by fears of French subversion or invasion. , magnified by the internal struggle between Federalists and Republicans. Prominent Federalists continued to fear a Republican uprising on behalf of France, while Jefferson and the Republicans saw the Federalists as closefr monarchists who were betraying the sacred principles of the revolution. 26 The fear of French subversion also led to the passage of the controversiall Alien and Sedition laws in the summer of 1798. Although less severe than similar laws in Europe, these measures included a ban on the publication of "false, scandalous, and malicious writing . . . against the government" and marked a noteworthy departure from the initial revolutionary commitment to liberty and free speech. 27
25 On these events, see Elkins and McKitrick, Age ofFederalism, 645; William Stinchcombe, The XYZ Affair (Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 198o); Alexander DeConde, The Quasi- War: The Politics and Diplomacy of the Undeclared War with France, 1 797-1801 (New York: Scrib- ner's, 1966), chap. 2; and Gilbert Lycan, Alexander Hamilton and American Foreign Policy: A Designfor Greatness (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), 381-90.
26 Thus Hamilton wrote Washington in May 1798, "It is more and more evident that the powerful faction which has for years opposed the government, is determined to go every length with France. . . . They are ready to new? model our Constitution under the influence or coercion of France, and . . . in substance . . . to make this country a province of France. " For his part, Jefferson accused the Federalists of seeking "to keep up the inflammation of the public mind" and argued that "it was the irresistible influence and popularity of General Washing- ton played off by the cunning of Hamilton, which turned the government over to anti-re- publican hands. " Quoted in Lycan, Hamilton, 36<H;3; and see also Elkins and McKitrick, Age ofFederalism, 583-84.
27 Federalist fears of France were not without some basis, as the Directory did have ambi- tions in the Western Hemisphere and the French negotiators had told their U. S. counterparts,
? ? ? ? ? The American, Mexican, Turkish, and Chinese Revolutions
Despite the widespread belief that war with France was inevitable, a combination of Republican opposition, military weakness, and divisions within Federalist ranks prevented a further escalation of the conflict. Adams was committed to defending U. S. maritime rights and preserving its commercial ties with England, but he recognized that public support for war was lacking and he preferred to place the onus for war on France. 28 Thus, the conflict was limited to an undeclared naval war, and a rapid in- crease in U. S. naval power quickly ended the French threat to U. S. ship- ping. Talleyrand offered to resume negotiations, Adams sent a new mission to France, and the Convention of Mortefontaine in September t8oo ended the Quasi-War by abrogating the moribund alliance and restoring most-fa- vored commercial relations. 29 It also marked the Federalists' last diplomatic
achievement, as splits within the party and a personal rivalry between Adams and Hamilton enabled Jefferson and the Republicans to capture the presidency in t8ot.
The Era of Republican Expansion, 1801-1812. Where the Federalists be- lieved that U. S. weakness required a willingness to compromise with more powerful states (such as England), Jefferson's party was convinced that the United States could achieve its aims independently. And where the Federal- ists sought a strong central state and a more powerful military establish- ment, the Republicans saw a strong military as a threat to liberty and believed that the lure of U. S. commerce would allow the country to preserve its interests without recourse to war. 30
At the same time, Jefferson was committed to a program of national ex- pansion. He regarded the acquisition of additional territory as essential to the United States' retaining its agrarian character, and the creation of "sister republics" throughout North America would also prevent the European
"With the French party in America, . . . [we would be able] to throw the blame that will attend the rupture of negotiations on [you] . . . and you may assure yourselves that this wi! R be done. " As Buel notes, however, "Talleyrand and his agents could no? have done more to un- dermine the Republican position than if they had been in the Federalists' pay. " Quoted in Buel, Securing the Revolution, 163, and also see 172-'74?
28 In July, Congress defeated a motion to permit the seizure of armed and unarmed French vessels by a vote of 52 to 31, which DeConde describes as "in a sense, the closest the House came to taking a test vote on full-scale war. " A motion permitting the seizure of armed ves- sels and the commissioning of privateers passed on July 9? Quasi-War, 106-108.
29 On the naval aspects of the Quasi-War, see Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism, 644-54. The Convention of Mortefontaine is reprinted in DeConde, Quasi-War, 351-72.
30 According to Tucker and Hendrickson, "Rather than adjusting to 'the general policy of Nations,' Jefferson and Madison sought to overturn it. " Empire of Liberty, 18-21, 35, 39-43? On Jefferson's attitudes toward the use of force, see Reginald C. Stuart, The Half-Way Pacifist: Thomas Jefferson's View of War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978).
? ? ? Revolution and War
powers from threatening the new republic directly or contaminating it with aristocratic ideals. 31
Jefferson's foremost accomplishment as president was the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory in 1803. Both the Directory and Napoleon had con- templated reestablishing an empire in North America, and France obtained the retrocession of Louisiana from Spain with the secret Treaty of San Ilde- fonso in October 1800. Jefferson responded by accelerating the acquisition of Indian lands east of the Mississippi River and by threatening to align with England in the event that France reoccupied New Orleans. 32 When Spain re- stricted U. S. use of the port of New Orleans, Jefferson sent James Monroe to Paris to purchase New Orleans and the Floridas. The Peace of Amiens was unraveling by the time Monroe arrived, and Napoleon now offered to sell the entire Louisiana Territory to the United States. The negotiations were completed in April 1803. Jefferson relaxed his earlier views on the limits of executive power and forced the treaty through the Senate rather than sub- mit it for public approval via a constitutional amendment. It was an unmis? takable triumph: the United States gained control over the mouth of the Mississippi and roughly doubled its total territory. 33
Jefferson's expansionism turned next to the Spanish territories in Florida. Based on a dubious reading of previous agreements, the United States laid claim to the region between New Orleans and the Perdido River, but the claims collapsed when France backed the Spanish position. 34 Jefferson tried to convince Spain to abandon the region, through a "campaign of persua- sion, bribery, and threat," but his hopes that Spain would follow the French lead and abandon North America proved overly optimistic and the Floridas were still in Spanish hands when he left office in t8o8. 35
31 See Tucker and Hendrickson, Empire of Liberty, 29-31, 96-98, 15? 2; and Horsman, Diplomacy ofthe New Republic, 12-13.
32 In a letter to the U. S. minister in France (intended for French eyes as well), Jefferson wrote, "There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and ha- bitual enemy. It is New Orleans. " He added, "The day that France takes possession of New Orleans . . . from that day on we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation. " Even if intended solely as a warning, it was a remarkable statement for a confirmed Anglophobe and Francophile. Quotations from Dumas Malone, Jefferson the President: First Term, 1801-1805 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), 254-57; and Tucker and Hendrickson, Empire of Lib- erty, 98.
33SeeAlexanderDeConde,ThisAffairofLouisiana(NewYork:Scribner's,1976),tSo-8-6; Tucker and Hendrickson, Empire ofLiberty, 122-35, 163-71; and Malone, Jefferson the President: First Term, chaps. 15-16.
34 See Tucker and Hendrickson, Empire ofLiberty, 137-41.
35 The quotation is from Stuart, Halfway Pacifist, 40; and see also Tucker and Hendrickson, Empire ofLiberty, ? 39-41; DeConde, This Affair ofLouisiana, 215-40; Malone, Jefferson the Presi- dent: First Term, 343-47, and Jefferson the President: Second Term, 1805-1809 (Boston: Little, Brown, t974? 45-55, 62-77, 91-94?
? ? ? The American, Mexican, Turkish, and Chinese Revolutions
The central problem of Jefferson's second term, however, was a renewed maritime conflict with England. Prior to 1805, England had permitted U. S. vessels to transport goods from the French West Indies to France provided they first stopped in a U. S. port (a procedure known as the "broken voy- age"). As the war with France intensified, however, many Britons began to see this policy as an unwarranted boon to the French war effort and a threat to English commerce. English appeals courts declared these cargoes liable to seizure in 1805; the Royal Navy's policy of stopping U. S. merchant vessels in order to impress British subjects caused further U. S. resentment; and ef-
forts to resolve the dispute by negotiation were unsuccessful. Anglo-Amer- ican relations deteriorated further in June 1807, when an English warship fired upon and boarded the USS Chesapeake and removed four seamen, trig- gering a storm of popular protest and renewed calls for war. 36
Yet Jefferson's own aversion to the use of force and the Republicans' long- standing belief in the coercive power of U. S. commerce soon dampened the momentum for war. Instead, Jefferson decided to employ "peaceable coer- cion" in the form of an economic embargo. In February 1808 Congress au- thorized the enforcemertt of the Non-Importation Act against selected English goods and approved Jefferson's request for an Embargo Act re- stricting all U. S. trade. This decision reflected Jefferson's desire to protect U. S. vessels by keeping them in port, as well as his tendency to play for time before resorting to violence and his idealistic belief that the new American republic could teach the corrupt European monarchies a lesson about peace- ful alternatives to war. 37
Unfortunately, Jefferson had underestimated English resolve and exag- gerated U. S. leverage, and the embargo turned out to be both a poor instru- ment of coercion and a disaster for U. S. commerce. The resulting depress. ion exacerbated divisions between commercial and agrarian interests in the United States and squandered much of the popularity Jefferson had won during his first term.
The crisis of 1807-18o8 laid the foundation for the formal outbreak of war in 1812. The issues in dispute had not changed significantly; although Jef- ferson repealed the embargo just before leaving office, trade with England and France was restricted by a new Non-Intercourse Act, and efforts to lift the ban reinforced each side's perceptions of hostility. In 1810, Congress au- thorized the president to bar U. S. commerce with the opponents of any state that formally acknowledged U. S. maritime rights. Napoleon promised to re-
36 As Jefferson remarked following the Chesapeake affair, "The British have often enough, God knows, given us cause of war before. . . . But now they have touched a chord which vi- brates in every heart. " Quoted in Malone, Jefferson the President: Second Term, 425-26; and see Bradford Perkins, Prologue to War: England and the United States, 1Bos-1B12 (Berkeley: Uni- versity of California Press, 1963), 2-3 1, 77-95?
37 See Tucker and Hendricksen, Empire ofLiberty, 204-209.
? ? Revolution and War
scind French restrictions on American commerce provided England lifted its own ban on U. S. trade with France, and even though this pledge was meaningless so long as the Royal Navy prohibited commerce between the United States and France, Jefferson's successor, James Madison, swallowed the bait and agreed to reimpose a ban on U. S. trade with England in 1811. 38
Under rising Anglo-American tensions, England had already resumed covert support to the Indian tribes along the northwestern frontier. Madison and the Republicans became convinced that war was necessary to protect the frontier and defend U. S. maritime rights, and they thought an invasion of Canada would force Britain to alter its maritime policy and would elimi- nate British influence from North America once and for all. Prominent Re- publicans were extremely optimistic, based on exaggerated estimates of U. S. military prowess and the belief that the Canadian population would greet them as liberators. The governor of New York predicted that "one-half of the militia of Canada would join our standard," and Representative John Randolph of Virginia anticipated a "holiday campaign . . . with no expense of blood, OJr treasure, on our part-Canada is to conquer itself-she is to be subdued by the principles of fraternity. "39 Despite strong Federalist opposi-
tion, Congress approved Madison's war message by a vote of 79 to 49, and Madison signed the war bill on June 18, 1812. Nearly thirty years after gain- ing independence, the United States had entered its first real war.
Is the American Revolution an Exception?
At the most general level, the American case demonstrates the value of a systemic perspective. U. S. diplomacy was not simply the product of ideo- logical preferences and domestic pressures; it was also shaped by the state of relations among the other great powers and the policies that they adopted. French support for the colonies during the War of Independence was a by-pwduct of the Anglo-French rivalry in Europe, and the wars of the French Revolution formed the backdrop for many of the problems U. S. lead- ers faced after 1787.
France, England, Spain, and the Barbary states all took advantage of U. S. weakness after the American Revolution, and the United States was able to evade or defeat these threats largely because the other great powers were at such odds with each other. Thus, this case confirms
38 SeePerkins,ProloguetoWar,239-53;andJ. C. A. Stagg,Mr. Madison'sWar:Politics,Diplo- macy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, I78J-I8JO (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 28-29, 54-57.
39 Jefferson echoed the prevailing Republican optimism by saying that "the acquisition of Canada . . . will be a mere matter of marching," and Henry Clay of Kentucky declared that "the militia of Kentucky are alone competent to place Montreal and Upper Canada at our feet. " Quoted in Donald R. Hickey, The War of 1 8 1 2 : A Forgotten Conflict (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 73; and Stagg, Mr. Madison's War, 5 n. 8.
? ? [28o]
? The American, Mexican, Turkish, and Chinese Revolutions
that one cannot understand the foreign policy of a revolutionary state by looking solely at its internal characteristics or ideological underpinnings.
Another similarity was the Founding Fathers' belief that the creation of the republic was an event of universal significance. This vision was some- times used to justify support for sympathetic revolutions elsewhere (as in Hamilton's dreams of fomenting democratic revolutions in Latin America or Jefferson's vision of an "Empire of Liberty" in the Western Hemisphere), but attempts to carry out these ambitions were limited by U. S. weakness, the belief that the American experience was unique and would be difficult to duplicate, and the fear that trying to export the revolution would com- promise American "virtue," generate excessive military requirements, and tarnish the republican experiment. 40
Like other revolutionary elites, U. S. leaders were also prone to a com- bination of insecurity and overconfidence. On the one hand, they viewed the republic as fragile and worried that the new nation would succumb to a combination of foreign subversion and internal division. These fears intensified the bitter struggle between Federalists and Republicans, as each faction feared that the other intended to betray the republic to an alien ideal. Such behavior is characteristic of revolutionary regimes, where founding principles are seen as sacred but are still being trans- lated into concrete policies and where political competition is not yet bounded by ? raditions, norms, and institutions. 41 Insecurity also lay at the root of U. S. expansionism, as Jefferson believed that foreign control of the Mississippi Valley and the Floridas would pose a permanent threat to the new nation.
On the other hand, U. S. leaders were optimistic about America's long- term potential and "confident of America's importance in the world . . . and of its future greatness. "42 This hopeful vision could be used to justify a pol- icy of either accommodation or confrontation, however; Hamilton argued against war with England in 1795 by invoking both America's present weakness and its glowing long-range prospects, while Jefferson and Madi- son saw American commerce as a powerful diplomatic weapon and advo- cated an aggressive commercial policy against EnglandY Like other revolutionary states, in short, the United States was repeatedly tom be- tween concern for its immediate survival and a remarkable confidence in its ability to chart its own course.
40 As a result, until 1812 U. S. leaders did not succumb to the same bellicosity displayed by other revolutionary states. Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism, 3 1 3 .
41 SeeElkinsandMcKitrick,AgeofFederalism,78,270.
42 See Horsman, Diplomacy ofthe New Republic, 4-6; and Hutson, John Adams, 6-10.
43 As Hamilton put it, "few nations can have stronger inducements than the United States
to cultivate peace. " Quoted in Lycan, Hamilton, 216; and see also Combs, Jay Treaty, 1 18-19; and Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism, 434?
? ? Revolution and War
U. S. relations with other countries were also subject to spirals of misper- ception and hostility, most obviously with revolutionary France. The revo- lutionaries in France initially regarded the United States as a inspiration. , and many U. S. leaders saw the fall of the French monarchy as a vindicatiol! 1l of their own experience and a crucial advance in the struggle for liberty. These perceptions obscured the many differences between the two nations' experiences, however, and disillusionment was swift. Genet's tenure as France's minister to the United States was a disaster because of his erro- neous belief that a direct appeal to the American people would enable him to reverse the Federalists' policy of neutrality, and his successors' efforts to aid the Republicans in the 1795 election backfired just as badly. The XYZ ne- gotiations in 1797 revealed equally profound misconceptions on France's part, as exaggerated beliefs in the strength of the "French party" in the United States led Talleyrand to provoke a quarrel that neither country
wanted.
Domestic divisions within the United States contributed to these prob- lems by preventing foreign powers from anticipating U. S. responses cor- rectly. Genet's blunders are understandable in light of the enthusiastic welcome he received upon his arrival; ironically, the sympathies he had aroused made his activities seem even more dangerous to the Federalists and fueled their desire to restrain him. Similarly, although the Republicans condemned English maritime policy in 1794 and 1805, the Federalists em- phasized the need to avoid a direct confrontation for which the United States was poorly prepared. In these circumstances, it is not surprising that Britain could not foresee how the United States would react, while the fear
that their internal rivals were in cahoots with the foreign adversary encour- aged both Federalists and Republicans to respond more vigorously than cir- cumstances warranted. 44
Finally, this case highlights the trade-offs and tensions between revolu- tionary ideals and external constraints. The idealism of the Founding Fa- thers was evident in their aversion to traditional diplomacy and their disdain for protocol, in their desire to avoid "entangling alliances" and their opposition to a permanent military establishment, and in their faith that commercial policy would be a powerful diplomatic weapon and their fear of "foreign corruption. " Yet despite these deeply rooted convictions, the for- eign policy behavior of the new republic did not differ dramatically from that of other powers. U. S. leaders were keenly concerned with enhancing
44 These same divisions may have encouraged spiraling but discouraged war. Because the Federalists would not support war with England while the Republicans were opposed to war with France, it was difficult for the nation as a whole to go to war with either one. The War of 1812 supports this conjecture: the Federalists still opposed the decision for war, but the Re- publicans now controlled both the legislative and executive branches and did not need the Federalists' approval.
? ? ? ? The American, Mexican, Turkish, and Chinese Revolutions
their security; they also favored the preservation of a balance of power and were willing to modify their revolutionary ideals in the face of external pressure. 45 The demands of the War of Independence led to the alliance with France in 1778 (which directly contradicted the principles of the Model Treaty), and external pressures eventually convinced the new nation to abandon the Articles of Confederation in favor of a federal system that could stand up more effectively to foreign pressure. The need for economic recovery encouraged Hamilton and the Federalists to seek a rapprochement with England via the Jay Treaty, and the naval threat from France inspired a rapid military buildup in 1797-98. Even Jefferson, whose idealism and An- glophobia were especially pronounced, was quick to use U. S. naval power against the Barbary pirates and was willing to contemplate an alliance with
England in order to check French ambitions in the Mississippi Valley. 46 Jef- ferson also recognized the strategic benefits of removing the European pres- ence in North America, and he was willing to relax his Republican convictions in order to achieve this goal. 47 Like other revolutionary states, in short, in its early diplomacy the United States displayed both a commitment to strongly held ideals and a willingess to abandon them in the name of na- tional security.
The similarities just noted are striking, if only because Americans today are not inclined to see any resemblance between the Founding Fathers and such figures as Robespierre, Lenin, and Khomeini. Yet the differences be- tween the American Revolution and the other cases we have examined are equally important, beginning with the relative mildness of the revolution- ary process itself. The American Revolution resembles an elite "revolution from above" in certain respects, in that most of its leaders, who were drawn from the prerevolutionary elite, did not set out to overturn the es- tablished social order. Although their actions had revolutionary effects and gave rise to the creation of a novel set of political and social. institu- tions, the process was also a remarkably deliberate and carefully reasoned
45 The realist component of early U. S. foreign policy is presented most revealingly in Hut- son, John Adams, "Early American Foreign Policy," and "Intellectual Foundations"; and Ger- ald Stourzh, Benjamin Franklin and American Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954).
46 Jefferson at one point maintained that United States "should practice neither commerce nor navigation, but stand with respect to Europe precisely on the footing of China. " But he added that this was "theory only, and a theory which the servants of America were not at lib- erty to follow. " See Combs, Jay Treaty, 74; and Tucker and Hendrickson, Empire of Liberty, )Q-)1.
47 Jefferson's pragmatism is also revealed by his decision to ratify the Louisiana Purchase via congressional approval rather than via a constitutional amendment. As Dumas Malone suggests, Jefferson "was generally more realistic when in office than when in opposition, less doctrinaire; and his situation with respect to the treaty and its promises can best be described by saying that he was caught in a chain of inexorable circumstances. " Jefferson the President, First Term, 318-2o, 332; and see Kaplan, Colonies into Nation, 149.
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affair. 48 There were sharp political quarrels, and occasional uprisings such as the Shays's and Whiskey rebellions, but these events pale in compari- son to the Jacobin Terror, the Vendee rebellion, the Russian Civil War, or the internal struggles in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The divisions be- tween Federalists and Republican did not end in the expulsion or exter- mination of one side by the other but in a peaceful transfer of power in 1801. And because the internal struggle was less severe, the perceived threat of outside interference was less ominous as well. 49
A second difference was the ideology of the revolution. The American revolutionaries did not see the capture of state power as the means to im- pose a far-reaching reconstruction of society. On the contrary, they were deeply suspicious of state power and devoted to the preservation of liberty, which they conceived as freedom from arbitrary government authority. 50 Thus, where the French, Russian, and Iranian revolutions produced strong state bureaucracies designed to facilitate social change at home and mobi- lize the nation for war, the American state was constrained by the profound opposition to a large military establishment and by a system of checks and balances that formed its principal defense against arbitrary executive powell" and the tyranny of democratic. majorities. 51
This discussion brings us to the central question: Why didn't the American Revolution lead to war? The revolution created a radically dif- ferent vision of society and government and disrupted the balance of power in North America. The new nation was internally divided and suspicious of foreign powers, and it faced serious diplomatic challenges from several quarters. Yet with the partial exceptions of the Quasi-War with France, the naval war with the Barbary states, and its frontier skiJr- mishes with the indigenous Indian tribes, the United States did not go to war until 1812. The explanation for this apparent anomaly rests on four main factors.
First, unlike that of most of the other revolutions examined in this study, the ideology of the American Revolution discouraged active efforts to ex- port its principles. Where the Jacobins, Bolsheviks, and Iranian clerics used
48 See Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1 776-1787 (Chapel Hill: Urui- versity of North Carolina Press, 1969), 3-10.
49 See Jolm Shy, "Force, Order, and Democracy in the American Revolution," in Greene, American Revolution, 76-. -77
50 See Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Har- vard University Press, Belknap Press, 1967), 35-43, 55-93, 319; Wood, Creation of the American Republic, 18-28, 61? 5, 6o8-6o9; and Buel, Securing the Revolution.
51 According to Lois Schwoerer, "the anti-standing army bias . . . became a basic assump- tion of almost every political leader" in America. "No Standing Armies! ": The Anti-Army Ideol- ogy in Sevmteenth Century England (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1974), 195; and Carp, "Problem of National Defense," 2o-24.
? ? ? The American, Mexican, Turkish, and Chinese Revolutions
control of the state to promote social change at home and abroad, the Founding Fathers saw state power as a danger and refused to grant it unchecked authority. By inhibiting efforts to build a strong state (and espe- cially a strong military establishment), their ideology strictly limited the ability of U. S. leaders to conduct an activist diplomacy. In addition, many U. S. leaders sought to limit their involvement with other states so as not to contaminate the republican experiment, and even men as politically op- posed as Jefferson and Hamilton agreed that the United States should serve as an example while refraining from active efforts to spread its principles abroad. The United States would be a model for other societies but would not try to remake them in its own image. 52
The absence of war was also due to the new country's paradoxical com- bination of weakness and invulnerability. On the one hand, the United States was too weak to pose a serious threat to the other great powers, so those states could take a more relaxed view of events across the ocean. In- deed, neither England nor France placed a high priority on relations with the United States during the 1790s, preoccupied as they were with domestic events and the expanding war in Europe. 53 At the same time, its vast size, sparse population, and poorly developed communications made the new nation extremely difficult to conquer (as the English experience in the War of Independence had demonstrated). 54 Thus, foreign powers had little rea- son to confront the United States (except at sea) but ample incentive to avoid a major military commitment in North America. These same consid- erations dampened U. S. concerns: although U. S. leaders were worried about subversion and disloyalty and occasionally indulged in unfounded
52 As John Quincy Adams put it in 1821: "Wherever the standard of freedom and indepen- dence has been or shall be unfurled, there will [America's] heart . . . be. But she goes not abroad in search off monsters to destroy. She is the well wisher to the freedom and indepen- dence of all. She is fthe champion and vindicator only of her own. " Quoted in Armstrong, Rev- olution and World Order, 52; and see also DeConde, Entangling Alliance, 6-7; Tucker and Hendrickson, Empire ofLiberty, 24o-43, 252-54; and Hutson, "Early American Diplomacy," 49-50.
53 DuringtheXYZaffair,TalleyrandremarkedthattheUnitedStateswasofnormore"con- sequence to [the Directory] nor ought it to be treated with greater respect than Geneva or Genoa," and Director Jean-Franr;ois Reubell devoted only three lines of a thirty-four page re- port on French diplomacy to the United States and referred to John Adams as "President of Congress. " British officials were similarly inclined. According to Jerald Combs, Prime Minis- ter Pitt "tended to ignore American problems" and left them in the hands of his subordinates. According to DeConde, "in the 1790s the United States was relatively so insignificant . . . that in any struggle in which the major maritime powers took a real interest it could be little more than a pawn. " See Combs, jay Treaty, 87; DeConde, Entangling Alliance, 503; Elkins and Mc- Kitrick, Age ofFederalism, 401-403, 506-507, 570, and 874-76 n. 131; and Stinchcombe, XYZ Af-
fair, 35?
54 See Shy, "Force, Order, and Democracy," and Jonathan R. Dull, "Two Republics in a Hos-
tile World," in Greene, American Revolution, 78, 158.
? ? Revolution and War
fears of invasion, their relative invulnerability discouraged a precipitous re- sort to force. Thus, Hamilton argued against war in 1794 by saying that "to subvert by force republican liberty in this country, nothing short of entiire conquest would suffice," and the attempt "would be absolutely ruinous ? o the undertakers. "55
Third, U. S. efforts to avoid war were greatly aided by its geographic sep- aration from Europe. Distance reduced the threat that it might pose to Eu- ropean interests and raised the costs of European involvement in Norfth America. This effect was perhaps most evident in Napoleon's decision to abandon his plans to occupy New Orleans and his willingness to sell tlhe Louisiana Territory, but the same factor made it easier for Britain to cede dominance of the continent to its former colonies. Although fears of foreign invasion did arise from time to time, they were generally fleeting.
Lastly, the revolution in France (and the subsequent outbreak of war in Europe) was a stroke of good fortune for the United States, although it cre- ated a number of problems as well. On the one hand, the European con- flict discouraged England, France, and Spain from taking direct action against the new republic, helped U. S. leaders obtain the Jay and Pinckney treaties, and led directly to the Louisiana Purchase. On the other hand, the war in Europe repeatedly threatened to drag the U. S. in, as it finally did in 1812. On balance, however, rivalries elsewhere were an asset for the United States. They aided the expansion of U. S. commerce and gave other states an incentive to stay on good terms with it. Given the relative weak- ness of the United States during its first three decades, this was no small advantage.
The American Revolution bears more than a passing resemblance to the cases examined in chapters 3-5. Foreign responses to the revolution we? re heavily influenced by a concern for the balance of power; the Founding Fathers attributed to the revolution a universal significance, and they saw themselves as both vulnerable in the short term and destined to control a continent over time. Like other revolutionary leaders, they were suspi- cious of foreign powers and obsessed with security, and a combination of internal divisions and misperceptions helped trigger hostile spirals wnth France and England. These disputes brought the United States close to war on several occasions and might have led to open warfare in any of them. At a minimum, therefore, the American Revolution supports the claim that revolutions intensify security competition and increase the like- lihood of war.
55 QuotedinLycan,Hamilton,216. Madisonexpressedasimilarviewtenyearsearlier,say- ing, "No European nation can ever send against us such a regular army as we need fear. " Quoted in Combs, Jay Treaty, 73?
tempt to aid the Republicans in the election of 17? had reinforced U. S. suspi- cions and helped the Federalists retain power. Jacobin excesses had under-? mined U. S. sympathies for France, while the French government saw the Jay Treaty as yet anotherbetrayal of the Franco-American alliance. In March 1797, the French Directory declared that neutral vessels carrying British goods would be subject to seizure, a step that directly threatened U. S. maritime in- terests. President John Adams sent a diplomatic mission to France to negoti- ate a settlement, but the foreign minister, Charles Talleyrand, refused to see them and sent three agents (known to posterity as X, Y, and Z), to arrange a bribe of $250,000 for himself and a loan of $12 million for the French govern- ment as preconditions for begingnin negotiations. The U. S. commissioners re- jected the terms and the mission accomplished nothing, but news of Talleyrand's actions ignited a storm of protest in the United States, where de- mands grew for a declaration of war. Congress authorized the construction of twelve new warships and initiated plans to increase the regular army as well. Some Federalist leaders tried to use the crisis to discredit the Republican cause, while others entertained hopes of an Anglo-American campaign against the French and Spanish possessions in the Western Hemisphere. 25
These measures were justified by fears of French subversion or invasion. , magnified by the internal struggle between Federalists and Republicans. Prominent Federalists continued to fear a Republican uprising on behalf of France, while Jefferson and the Republicans saw the Federalists as closefr monarchists who were betraying the sacred principles of the revolution. 26 The fear of French subversion also led to the passage of the controversiall Alien and Sedition laws in the summer of 1798. Although less severe than similar laws in Europe, these measures included a ban on the publication of "false, scandalous, and malicious writing . . . against the government" and marked a noteworthy departure from the initial revolutionary commitment to liberty and free speech. 27
25 On these events, see Elkins and McKitrick, Age ofFederalism, 645; William Stinchcombe, The XYZ Affair (Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 198o); Alexander DeConde, The Quasi- War: The Politics and Diplomacy of the Undeclared War with France, 1 797-1801 (New York: Scrib- ner's, 1966), chap. 2; and Gilbert Lycan, Alexander Hamilton and American Foreign Policy: A Designfor Greatness (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), 381-90.
26 Thus Hamilton wrote Washington in May 1798, "It is more and more evident that the powerful faction which has for years opposed the government, is determined to go every length with France. . . . They are ready to new? model our Constitution under the influence or coercion of France, and . . . in substance . . . to make this country a province of France. " For his part, Jefferson accused the Federalists of seeking "to keep up the inflammation of the public mind" and argued that "it was the irresistible influence and popularity of General Washing- ton played off by the cunning of Hamilton, which turned the government over to anti-re- publican hands. " Quoted in Lycan, Hamilton, 36<H;3; and see also Elkins and McKitrick, Age ofFederalism, 583-84.
27 Federalist fears of France were not without some basis, as the Directory did have ambi- tions in the Western Hemisphere and the French negotiators had told their U. S. counterparts,
? ? ? ? ? The American, Mexican, Turkish, and Chinese Revolutions
Despite the widespread belief that war with France was inevitable, a combination of Republican opposition, military weakness, and divisions within Federalist ranks prevented a further escalation of the conflict. Adams was committed to defending U. S. maritime rights and preserving its commercial ties with England, but he recognized that public support for war was lacking and he preferred to place the onus for war on France. 28 Thus, the conflict was limited to an undeclared naval war, and a rapid in- crease in U. S. naval power quickly ended the French threat to U. S. ship- ping. Talleyrand offered to resume negotiations, Adams sent a new mission to France, and the Convention of Mortefontaine in September t8oo ended the Quasi-War by abrogating the moribund alliance and restoring most-fa- vored commercial relations. 29 It also marked the Federalists' last diplomatic
achievement, as splits within the party and a personal rivalry between Adams and Hamilton enabled Jefferson and the Republicans to capture the presidency in t8ot.
The Era of Republican Expansion, 1801-1812. Where the Federalists be- lieved that U. S. weakness required a willingness to compromise with more powerful states (such as England), Jefferson's party was convinced that the United States could achieve its aims independently. And where the Federal- ists sought a strong central state and a more powerful military establish- ment, the Republicans saw a strong military as a threat to liberty and believed that the lure of U. S. commerce would allow the country to preserve its interests without recourse to war. 30
At the same time, Jefferson was committed to a program of national ex- pansion. He regarded the acquisition of additional territory as essential to the United States' retaining its agrarian character, and the creation of "sister republics" throughout North America would also prevent the European
"With the French party in America, . . . [we would be able] to throw the blame that will attend the rupture of negotiations on [you] . . . and you may assure yourselves that this wi! R be done. " As Buel notes, however, "Talleyrand and his agents could no? have done more to un- dermine the Republican position than if they had been in the Federalists' pay. " Quoted in Buel, Securing the Revolution, 163, and also see 172-'74?
28 In July, Congress defeated a motion to permit the seizure of armed and unarmed French vessels by a vote of 52 to 31, which DeConde describes as "in a sense, the closest the House came to taking a test vote on full-scale war. " A motion permitting the seizure of armed ves- sels and the commissioning of privateers passed on July 9? Quasi-War, 106-108.
29 On the naval aspects of the Quasi-War, see Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism, 644-54. The Convention of Mortefontaine is reprinted in DeConde, Quasi-War, 351-72.
30 According to Tucker and Hendrickson, "Rather than adjusting to 'the general policy of Nations,' Jefferson and Madison sought to overturn it. " Empire of Liberty, 18-21, 35, 39-43? On Jefferson's attitudes toward the use of force, see Reginald C. Stuart, The Half-Way Pacifist: Thomas Jefferson's View of War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978).
? ? ? Revolution and War
powers from threatening the new republic directly or contaminating it with aristocratic ideals. 31
Jefferson's foremost accomplishment as president was the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory in 1803. Both the Directory and Napoleon had con- templated reestablishing an empire in North America, and France obtained the retrocession of Louisiana from Spain with the secret Treaty of San Ilde- fonso in October 1800. Jefferson responded by accelerating the acquisition of Indian lands east of the Mississippi River and by threatening to align with England in the event that France reoccupied New Orleans. 32 When Spain re- stricted U. S. use of the port of New Orleans, Jefferson sent James Monroe to Paris to purchase New Orleans and the Floridas. The Peace of Amiens was unraveling by the time Monroe arrived, and Napoleon now offered to sell the entire Louisiana Territory to the United States. The negotiations were completed in April 1803. Jefferson relaxed his earlier views on the limits of executive power and forced the treaty through the Senate rather than sub- mit it for public approval via a constitutional amendment. It was an unmis? takable triumph: the United States gained control over the mouth of the Mississippi and roughly doubled its total territory. 33
Jefferson's expansionism turned next to the Spanish territories in Florida. Based on a dubious reading of previous agreements, the United States laid claim to the region between New Orleans and the Perdido River, but the claims collapsed when France backed the Spanish position. 34 Jefferson tried to convince Spain to abandon the region, through a "campaign of persua- sion, bribery, and threat," but his hopes that Spain would follow the French lead and abandon North America proved overly optimistic and the Floridas were still in Spanish hands when he left office in t8o8. 35
31 See Tucker and Hendrickson, Empire of Liberty, 29-31, 96-98, 15? 2; and Horsman, Diplomacy ofthe New Republic, 12-13.
32 In a letter to the U. S. minister in France (intended for French eyes as well), Jefferson wrote, "There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and ha- bitual enemy. It is New Orleans. " He added, "The day that France takes possession of New Orleans . . . from that day on we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation. " Even if intended solely as a warning, it was a remarkable statement for a confirmed Anglophobe and Francophile. Quotations from Dumas Malone, Jefferson the President: First Term, 1801-1805 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), 254-57; and Tucker and Hendrickson, Empire of Lib- erty, 98.
33SeeAlexanderDeConde,ThisAffairofLouisiana(NewYork:Scribner's,1976),tSo-8-6; Tucker and Hendrickson, Empire ofLiberty, 122-35, 163-71; and Malone, Jefferson the President: First Term, chaps. 15-16.
34 See Tucker and Hendrickson, Empire ofLiberty, 137-41.
35 The quotation is from Stuart, Halfway Pacifist, 40; and see also Tucker and Hendrickson, Empire ofLiberty, ? 39-41; DeConde, This Affair ofLouisiana, 215-40; Malone, Jefferson the Presi- dent: First Term, 343-47, and Jefferson the President: Second Term, 1805-1809 (Boston: Little, Brown, t974? 45-55, 62-77, 91-94?
? ? ? The American, Mexican, Turkish, and Chinese Revolutions
The central problem of Jefferson's second term, however, was a renewed maritime conflict with England. Prior to 1805, England had permitted U. S. vessels to transport goods from the French West Indies to France provided they first stopped in a U. S. port (a procedure known as the "broken voy- age"). As the war with France intensified, however, many Britons began to see this policy as an unwarranted boon to the French war effort and a threat to English commerce. English appeals courts declared these cargoes liable to seizure in 1805; the Royal Navy's policy of stopping U. S. merchant vessels in order to impress British subjects caused further U. S. resentment; and ef-
forts to resolve the dispute by negotiation were unsuccessful. Anglo-Amer- ican relations deteriorated further in June 1807, when an English warship fired upon and boarded the USS Chesapeake and removed four seamen, trig- gering a storm of popular protest and renewed calls for war. 36
Yet Jefferson's own aversion to the use of force and the Republicans' long- standing belief in the coercive power of U. S. commerce soon dampened the momentum for war. Instead, Jefferson decided to employ "peaceable coer- cion" in the form of an economic embargo. In February 1808 Congress au- thorized the enforcemertt of the Non-Importation Act against selected English goods and approved Jefferson's request for an Embargo Act re- stricting all U. S. trade. This decision reflected Jefferson's desire to protect U. S. vessels by keeping them in port, as well as his tendency to play for time before resorting to violence and his idealistic belief that the new American republic could teach the corrupt European monarchies a lesson about peace- ful alternatives to war. 37
Unfortunately, Jefferson had underestimated English resolve and exag- gerated U. S. leverage, and the embargo turned out to be both a poor instru- ment of coercion and a disaster for U. S. commerce. The resulting depress. ion exacerbated divisions between commercial and agrarian interests in the United States and squandered much of the popularity Jefferson had won during his first term.
The crisis of 1807-18o8 laid the foundation for the formal outbreak of war in 1812. The issues in dispute had not changed significantly; although Jef- ferson repealed the embargo just before leaving office, trade with England and France was restricted by a new Non-Intercourse Act, and efforts to lift the ban reinforced each side's perceptions of hostility. In 1810, Congress au- thorized the president to bar U. S. commerce with the opponents of any state that formally acknowledged U. S. maritime rights. Napoleon promised to re-
36 As Jefferson remarked following the Chesapeake affair, "The British have often enough, God knows, given us cause of war before. . . . But now they have touched a chord which vi- brates in every heart. " Quoted in Malone, Jefferson the President: Second Term, 425-26; and see Bradford Perkins, Prologue to War: England and the United States, 1Bos-1B12 (Berkeley: Uni- versity of California Press, 1963), 2-3 1, 77-95?
37 See Tucker and Hendricksen, Empire ofLiberty, 204-209.
? ? Revolution and War
scind French restrictions on American commerce provided England lifted its own ban on U. S. trade with France, and even though this pledge was meaningless so long as the Royal Navy prohibited commerce between the United States and France, Jefferson's successor, James Madison, swallowed the bait and agreed to reimpose a ban on U. S. trade with England in 1811. 38
Under rising Anglo-American tensions, England had already resumed covert support to the Indian tribes along the northwestern frontier. Madison and the Republicans became convinced that war was necessary to protect the frontier and defend U. S. maritime rights, and they thought an invasion of Canada would force Britain to alter its maritime policy and would elimi- nate British influence from North America once and for all. Prominent Re- publicans were extremely optimistic, based on exaggerated estimates of U. S. military prowess and the belief that the Canadian population would greet them as liberators. The governor of New York predicted that "one-half of the militia of Canada would join our standard," and Representative John Randolph of Virginia anticipated a "holiday campaign . . . with no expense of blood, OJr treasure, on our part-Canada is to conquer itself-she is to be subdued by the principles of fraternity. "39 Despite strong Federalist opposi-
tion, Congress approved Madison's war message by a vote of 79 to 49, and Madison signed the war bill on June 18, 1812. Nearly thirty years after gain- ing independence, the United States had entered its first real war.
Is the American Revolution an Exception?
At the most general level, the American case demonstrates the value of a systemic perspective. U. S. diplomacy was not simply the product of ideo- logical preferences and domestic pressures; it was also shaped by the state of relations among the other great powers and the policies that they adopted. French support for the colonies during the War of Independence was a by-pwduct of the Anglo-French rivalry in Europe, and the wars of the French Revolution formed the backdrop for many of the problems U. S. lead- ers faced after 1787.
France, England, Spain, and the Barbary states all took advantage of U. S. weakness after the American Revolution, and the United States was able to evade or defeat these threats largely because the other great powers were at such odds with each other. Thus, this case confirms
38 SeePerkins,ProloguetoWar,239-53;andJ. C. A. Stagg,Mr. Madison'sWar:Politics,Diplo- macy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, I78J-I8JO (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 28-29, 54-57.
39 Jefferson echoed the prevailing Republican optimism by saying that "the acquisition of Canada . . . will be a mere matter of marching," and Henry Clay of Kentucky declared that "the militia of Kentucky are alone competent to place Montreal and Upper Canada at our feet. " Quoted in Donald R. Hickey, The War of 1 8 1 2 : A Forgotten Conflict (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 73; and Stagg, Mr. Madison's War, 5 n. 8.
? ? [28o]
? The American, Mexican, Turkish, and Chinese Revolutions
that one cannot understand the foreign policy of a revolutionary state by looking solely at its internal characteristics or ideological underpinnings.
Another similarity was the Founding Fathers' belief that the creation of the republic was an event of universal significance. This vision was some- times used to justify support for sympathetic revolutions elsewhere (as in Hamilton's dreams of fomenting democratic revolutions in Latin America or Jefferson's vision of an "Empire of Liberty" in the Western Hemisphere), but attempts to carry out these ambitions were limited by U. S. weakness, the belief that the American experience was unique and would be difficult to duplicate, and the fear that trying to export the revolution would com- promise American "virtue," generate excessive military requirements, and tarnish the republican experiment. 40
Like other revolutionary elites, U. S. leaders were also prone to a com- bination of insecurity and overconfidence. On the one hand, they viewed the republic as fragile and worried that the new nation would succumb to a combination of foreign subversion and internal division. These fears intensified the bitter struggle between Federalists and Republicans, as each faction feared that the other intended to betray the republic to an alien ideal. Such behavior is characteristic of revolutionary regimes, where founding principles are seen as sacred but are still being trans- lated into concrete policies and where political competition is not yet bounded by ? raditions, norms, and institutions. 41 Insecurity also lay at the root of U. S. expansionism, as Jefferson believed that foreign control of the Mississippi Valley and the Floridas would pose a permanent threat to the new nation.
On the other hand, U. S. leaders were optimistic about America's long- term potential and "confident of America's importance in the world . . . and of its future greatness. "42 This hopeful vision could be used to justify a pol- icy of either accommodation or confrontation, however; Hamilton argued against war with England in 1795 by invoking both America's present weakness and its glowing long-range prospects, while Jefferson and Madi- son saw American commerce as a powerful diplomatic weapon and advo- cated an aggressive commercial policy against EnglandY Like other revolutionary states, in short, the United States was repeatedly tom be- tween concern for its immediate survival and a remarkable confidence in its ability to chart its own course.
40 As a result, until 1812 U. S. leaders did not succumb to the same bellicosity displayed by other revolutionary states. Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism, 3 1 3 .
41 SeeElkinsandMcKitrick,AgeofFederalism,78,270.
42 See Horsman, Diplomacy ofthe New Republic, 4-6; and Hutson, John Adams, 6-10.
43 As Hamilton put it, "few nations can have stronger inducements than the United States
to cultivate peace. " Quoted in Lycan, Hamilton, 216; and see also Combs, Jay Treaty, 1 18-19; and Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism, 434?
? ? Revolution and War
U. S. relations with other countries were also subject to spirals of misper- ception and hostility, most obviously with revolutionary France. The revo- lutionaries in France initially regarded the United States as a inspiration. , and many U. S. leaders saw the fall of the French monarchy as a vindicatiol! 1l of their own experience and a crucial advance in the struggle for liberty. These perceptions obscured the many differences between the two nations' experiences, however, and disillusionment was swift. Genet's tenure as France's minister to the United States was a disaster because of his erro- neous belief that a direct appeal to the American people would enable him to reverse the Federalists' policy of neutrality, and his successors' efforts to aid the Republicans in the 1795 election backfired just as badly. The XYZ ne- gotiations in 1797 revealed equally profound misconceptions on France's part, as exaggerated beliefs in the strength of the "French party" in the United States led Talleyrand to provoke a quarrel that neither country
wanted.
Domestic divisions within the United States contributed to these prob- lems by preventing foreign powers from anticipating U. S. responses cor- rectly. Genet's blunders are understandable in light of the enthusiastic welcome he received upon his arrival; ironically, the sympathies he had aroused made his activities seem even more dangerous to the Federalists and fueled their desire to restrain him. Similarly, although the Republicans condemned English maritime policy in 1794 and 1805, the Federalists em- phasized the need to avoid a direct confrontation for which the United States was poorly prepared. In these circumstances, it is not surprising that Britain could not foresee how the United States would react, while the fear
that their internal rivals were in cahoots with the foreign adversary encour- aged both Federalists and Republicans to respond more vigorously than cir- cumstances warranted. 44
Finally, this case highlights the trade-offs and tensions between revolu- tionary ideals and external constraints. The idealism of the Founding Fa- thers was evident in their aversion to traditional diplomacy and their disdain for protocol, in their desire to avoid "entangling alliances" and their opposition to a permanent military establishment, and in their faith that commercial policy would be a powerful diplomatic weapon and their fear of "foreign corruption. " Yet despite these deeply rooted convictions, the for- eign policy behavior of the new republic did not differ dramatically from that of other powers. U. S. leaders were keenly concerned with enhancing
44 These same divisions may have encouraged spiraling but discouraged war. Because the Federalists would not support war with England while the Republicans were opposed to war with France, it was difficult for the nation as a whole to go to war with either one. The War of 1812 supports this conjecture: the Federalists still opposed the decision for war, but the Re- publicans now controlled both the legislative and executive branches and did not need the Federalists' approval.
? ? ? ? The American, Mexican, Turkish, and Chinese Revolutions
their security; they also favored the preservation of a balance of power and were willing to modify their revolutionary ideals in the face of external pressure. 45 The demands of the War of Independence led to the alliance with France in 1778 (which directly contradicted the principles of the Model Treaty), and external pressures eventually convinced the new nation to abandon the Articles of Confederation in favor of a federal system that could stand up more effectively to foreign pressure. The need for economic recovery encouraged Hamilton and the Federalists to seek a rapprochement with England via the Jay Treaty, and the naval threat from France inspired a rapid military buildup in 1797-98. Even Jefferson, whose idealism and An- glophobia were especially pronounced, was quick to use U. S. naval power against the Barbary pirates and was willing to contemplate an alliance with
England in order to check French ambitions in the Mississippi Valley. 46 Jef- ferson also recognized the strategic benefits of removing the European pres- ence in North America, and he was willing to relax his Republican convictions in order to achieve this goal. 47 Like other revolutionary states, in short, in its early diplomacy the United States displayed both a commitment to strongly held ideals and a willingess to abandon them in the name of na- tional security.
The similarities just noted are striking, if only because Americans today are not inclined to see any resemblance between the Founding Fathers and such figures as Robespierre, Lenin, and Khomeini. Yet the differences be- tween the American Revolution and the other cases we have examined are equally important, beginning with the relative mildness of the revolution- ary process itself. The American Revolution resembles an elite "revolution from above" in certain respects, in that most of its leaders, who were drawn from the prerevolutionary elite, did not set out to overturn the es- tablished social order. Although their actions had revolutionary effects and gave rise to the creation of a novel set of political and social. institu- tions, the process was also a remarkably deliberate and carefully reasoned
45 The realist component of early U. S. foreign policy is presented most revealingly in Hut- son, John Adams, "Early American Foreign Policy," and "Intellectual Foundations"; and Ger- ald Stourzh, Benjamin Franklin and American Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954).
46 Jefferson at one point maintained that United States "should practice neither commerce nor navigation, but stand with respect to Europe precisely on the footing of China. " But he added that this was "theory only, and a theory which the servants of America were not at lib- erty to follow. " See Combs, Jay Treaty, 74; and Tucker and Hendrickson, Empire of Liberty, )Q-)1.
47 Jefferson's pragmatism is also revealed by his decision to ratify the Louisiana Purchase via congressional approval rather than via a constitutional amendment. As Dumas Malone suggests, Jefferson "was generally more realistic when in office than when in opposition, less doctrinaire; and his situation with respect to the treaty and its promises can best be described by saying that he was caught in a chain of inexorable circumstances. " Jefferson the President, First Term, 318-2o, 332; and see Kaplan, Colonies into Nation, 149.
? ? ? Revolution and War
affair. 48 There were sharp political quarrels, and occasional uprisings such as the Shays's and Whiskey rebellions, but these events pale in compari- son to the Jacobin Terror, the Vendee rebellion, the Russian Civil War, or the internal struggles in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The divisions be- tween Federalists and Republican did not end in the expulsion or exter- mination of one side by the other but in a peaceful transfer of power in 1801. And because the internal struggle was less severe, the perceived threat of outside interference was less ominous as well. 49
A second difference was the ideology of the revolution. The American revolutionaries did not see the capture of state power as the means to im- pose a far-reaching reconstruction of society. On the contrary, they were deeply suspicious of state power and devoted to the preservation of liberty, which they conceived as freedom from arbitrary government authority. 50 Thus, where the French, Russian, and Iranian revolutions produced strong state bureaucracies designed to facilitate social change at home and mobi- lize the nation for war, the American state was constrained by the profound opposition to a large military establishment and by a system of checks and balances that formed its principal defense against arbitrary executive powell" and the tyranny of democratic. majorities. 51
This discussion brings us to the central question: Why didn't the American Revolution lead to war? The revolution created a radically dif- ferent vision of society and government and disrupted the balance of power in North America. The new nation was internally divided and suspicious of foreign powers, and it faced serious diplomatic challenges from several quarters. Yet with the partial exceptions of the Quasi-War with France, the naval war with the Barbary states, and its frontier skiJr- mishes with the indigenous Indian tribes, the United States did not go to war until 1812. The explanation for this apparent anomaly rests on four main factors.
First, unlike that of most of the other revolutions examined in this study, the ideology of the American Revolution discouraged active efforts to ex- port its principles. Where the Jacobins, Bolsheviks, and Iranian clerics used
48 See Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1 776-1787 (Chapel Hill: Urui- versity of North Carolina Press, 1969), 3-10.
49 See Jolm Shy, "Force, Order, and Democracy in the American Revolution," in Greene, American Revolution, 76-. -77
50 See Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Har- vard University Press, Belknap Press, 1967), 35-43, 55-93, 319; Wood, Creation of the American Republic, 18-28, 61? 5, 6o8-6o9; and Buel, Securing the Revolution.
51 According to Lois Schwoerer, "the anti-standing army bias . . . became a basic assump- tion of almost every political leader" in America. "No Standing Armies! ": The Anti-Army Ideol- ogy in Sevmteenth Century England (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1974), 195; and Carp, "Problem of National Defense," 2o-24.
? ? ? The American, Mexican, Turkish, and Chinese Revolutions
control of the state to promote social change at home and abroad, the Founding Fathers saw state power as a danger and refused to grant it unchecked authority. By inhibiting efforts to build a strong state (and espe- cially a strong military establishment), their ideology strictly limited the ability of U. S. leaders to conduct an activist diplomacy. In addition, many U. S. leaders sought to limit their involvement with other states so as not to contaminate the republican experiment, and even men as politically op- posed as Jefferson and Hamilton agreed that the United States should serve as an example while refraining from active efforts to spread its principles abroad. The United States would be a model for other societies but would not try to remake them in its own image. 52
The absence of war was also due to the new country's paradoxical com- bination of weakness and invulnerability. On the one hand, the United States was too weak to pose a serious threat to the other great powers, so those states could take a more relaxed view of events across the ocean. In- deed, neither England nor France placed a high priority on relations with the United States during the 1790s, preoccupied as they were with domestic events and the expanding war in Europe. 53 At the same time, its vast size, sparse population, and poorly developed communications made the new nation extremely difficult to conquer (as the English experience in the War of Independence had demonstrated). 54 Thus, foreign powers had little rea- son to confront the United States (except at sea) but ample incentive to avoid a major military commitment in North America. These same consid- erations dampened U. S. concerns: although U. S. leaders were worried about subversion and disloyalty and occasionally indulged in unfounded
52 As John Quincy Adams put it in 1821: "Wherever the standard of freedom and indepen- dence has been or shall be unfurled, there will [America's] heart . . . be. But she goes not abroad in search off monsters to destroy. She is the well wisher to the freedom and indepen- dence of all. She is fthe champion and vindicator only of her own. " Quoted in Armstrong, Rev- olution and World Order, 52; and see also DeConde, Entangling Alliance, 6-7; Tucker and Hendrickson, Empire ofLiberty, 24o-43, 252-54; and Hutson, "Early American Diplomacy," 49-50.
53 DuringtheXYZaffair,TalleyrandremarkedthattheUnitedStateswasofnormore"con- sequence to [the Directory] nor ought it to be treated with greater respect than Geneva or Genoa," and Director Jean-Franr;ois Reubell devoted only three lines of a thirty-four page re- port on French diplomacy to the United States and referred to John Adams as "President of Congress. " British officials were similarly inclined. According to Jerald Combs, Prime Minis- ter Pitt "tended to ignore American problems" and left them in the hands of his subordinates. According to DeConde, "in the 1790s the United States was relatively so insignificant . . . that in any struggle in which the major maritime powers took a real interest it could be little more than a pawn. " See Combs, jay Treaty, 87; DeConde, Entangling Alliance, 503; Elkins and Mc- Kitrick, Age ofFederalism, 401-403, 506-507, 570, and 874-76 n. 131; and Stinchcombe, XYZ Af-
fair, 35?
54 See Shy, "Force, Order, and Democracy," and Jonathan R. Dull, "Two Republics in a Hos-
tile World," in Greene, American Revolution, 78, 158.
? ? Revolution and War
fears of invasion, their relative invulnerability discouraged a precipitous re- sort to force. Thus, Hamilton argued against war in 1794 by saying that "to subvert by force republican liberty in this country, nothing short of entiire conquest would suffice," and the attempt "would be absolutely ruinous ? o the undertakers. "55
Third, U. S. efforts to avoid war were greatly aided by its geographic sep- aration from Europe. Distance reduced the threat that it might pose to Eu- ropean interests and raised the costs of European involvement in Norfth America. This effect was perhaps most evident in Napoleon's decision to abandon his plans to occupy New Orleans and his willingness to sell tlhe Louisiana Territory, but the same factor made it easier for Britain to cede dominance of the continent to its former colonies. Although fears of foreign invasion did arise from time to time, they were generally fleeting.
Lastly, the revolution in France (and the subsequent outbreak of war in Europe) was a stroke of good fortune for the United States, although it cre- ated a number of problems as well. On the one hand, the European con- flict discouraged England, France, and Spain from taking direct action against the new republic, helped U. S. leaders obtain the Jay and Pinckney treaties, and led directly to the Louisiana Purchase. On the other hand, the war in Europe repeatedly threatened to drag the U. S. in, as it finally did in 1812. On balance, however, rivalries elsewhere were an asset for the United States. They aided the expansion of U. S. commerce and gave other states an incentive to stay on good terms with it. Given the relative weak- ness of the United States during its first three decades, this was no small advantage.
The American Revolution bears more than a passing resemblance to the cases examined in chapters 3-5. Foreign responses to the revolution we? re heavily influenced by a concern for the balance of power; the Founding Fathers attributed to the revolution a universal significance, and they saw themselves as both vulnerable in the short term and destined to control a continent over time. Like other revolutionary leaders, they were suspi- cious of foreign powers and obsessed with security, and a combination of internal divisions and misperceptions helped trigger hostile spirals wnth France and England. These disputes brought the United States close to war on several occasions and might have led to open warfare in any of them. At a minimum, therefore, the American Revolution supports the claim that revolutions intensify security competition and increase the like- lihood of war.
55 QuotedinLycan,Hamilton,216. Madisonexpressedasimilarviewtenyearsearlier,say- ing, "No European nation can ever send against us such a regular army as we need fear. " Quoted in Combs, Jay Treaty, 73?
