250 and Counting

Tag: Diplomacy

  • The French Commission

    Cover art for September 26, 1776: 1785 portrait of Arthur Lee by Charles Willson Peale. via Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia.

    The Continental Congress, in the wake of Washington’s recent letter, finally realized that they weren’t going to be able to defeat the British on their own. Some outside assistance would be needed.

    So on this day in 1776, they appointed a three-man commission to undertake a diplomatic mission to France, seeking money, arms and other materials.

    France, as we’ve mentioned before, was a good country to hit up. They were still salty about the way the French and Indian War ended up, and they’d already been assisting America through gray and black markets, in order to give themselves plausible deniability should someone get caught. Should this mission succeed, the activity would be much more overt, and could be perceived as France’s official recognition of the United States as a sovereign nation.

    It ultimately didn’t work out that way; that particular distinction went to Morocco and France became the second nation to officially recognize the US.

    As Mike notes, the trip itself wouldn’t get underway for another few months, but there’s no doubt that the meeting with French authorities marked a critical turning point for the American Revolution.

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  • The Staten Island Peace Conference–September 11, 1776

    Cover art for September 11, 1`776: The Billop House on Staten Island, where the aborted peace conference took place. Via Wikimedia Commons.

    The Staten Island Peace Conference was a bust almost from the beginning. Not because the sides were so opposed, but because one side didn’t have the authority to do any real negotiation.

    John Adams, Edward Rutledge and Benjamin Franklin had to row over from Perth Amboy, New Jersey to get to the Totten House, which is near the southernmost tip of New York State, on Staten Island. At the narrowest point I could find from the vicinity of the house, that’s nearly a half-mile across the mouth of the Arthur Kill River where it opens into Raritan Bay and ultimately the Atlantic Ocean.

    Unfortunately, Admiral Howe was so limited from a diplomatic standpoint that there wasn’t a lot he could do at that point, so after a few hours they broke up and the delegation was allowed to return to New Jersey. The war would continue for another severn years before concluding.

    In retrospect, we have multiple attempts for Admiral Howe to meet with George Washington, which failed on the basis of protocol (Howe wouldn’t refer to Washington as a General), so now we have to wonder what direction negotiations would have gone had one of those attempts succeeded. Would things be different, or would it wind up the same, and the events of today be obviated? If a meeting in July had ended in no agreement, would John Sullivan even have been paroled to go to Philadelphia and present the plan?

    I’ll leave that for you to chew on. In the meantime I’m still sounding pretty sultry, so enjoy that.

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  • Adams’ Model Treaty–July 18, 1776

    Cover art for July 18, 1776: The 1778 Treaty of Alliance with France, based on Adams' work of today. Via National Archives.

    Coming up with a model treaty wasn’t John Adams’ idea, but it turned out to be a very good idea that he was responsible for implementing.

    Once Adams had it in his head, he began to work on the model treaty along with the committee, and while it was intended to be used for commercial trade, it could be (and eventually was) adapted for soliciting military support in the form of weapons and other ordnance (rather than troops).

    Today’s artwork, incidentally, is the Treaty of Amity and Commerce from 1778 that the US signed with France. If you look closely you’ll see that the left side is in English and the right side is the French translation. This is just most of the first page, of course, but it’s interesting to see how such things were handled.

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  • Vive La France–February 6, 1776

    Vive La France–February 6, 1776

    Much like the Hessians of our last episode, the story involving our getting French recognition and friendship is longer and more complex than most people realize.

    The events of today were important, but they laid the groundwork for so much more in the future. France was already annoyed with Britain over the Seven Years’ War, so supporting the Colonies was the shrewd thing to do: France would annoy Britain with the treaty, America would get arms and soldiers (and naval support), and we wound up with a good friend later on for trade and merchant support.

    The French were reluctant to cooperate at first, in part because they were hedging their bets about the war’s outcome. But with a little luck and a few battle victories, a lot of formerly-clandestine activites became more overt. What’s more, without French assistance throughout the war, we might all be speaking British now.

    Oh, wait.

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  • Jean-Guillaume Hyde–January 24, 1776

    Cover art for January 24, 1776: Detail of an 1830 lithograph by Ducarme after a portrait by Legrand.
    Detail of an 1830 lithograph by Ducarme after a portrait by Legrand.

    While the United States has had its share of international mishaps, not all of them have been created by Americans. Jean-Guillaume Hyde, more properly known as “Jean-Guillaume, baron Hyde de Neuville”, would be an early example of this.

    Hyde was probably a textbook case of failing upward, as he appears to have suffered multiple setbacks and still managed to come out ahead later on. As early as 1793, when he was 17, Hyde liked to work behind the scenes, trying to nudge people into saying and doing things that would benefit France, and oftentimes failing. This eventually led to his being made to move to the United States in 1800. In 1814 when the Bourbons returned to power in France, he was allowed to return.

    That’s where his diplomatic career began, and he spent six years as the ambassador to the US, where he was rather universally despised. From there he went to Portugal, where he was again a disaster as a diplomat. This time it only took about three years to kick him out.

    In 1828 Hyde became Minister of the Navy and the Colonies where he did appear to have some luck improving the way the French Colonial Empire was organized and run, but he eventually resigned from the position as a symbol of protest.

    Hyde was involved with the internal discussions to decide whether a new commercial treaty with the US was a worthy idea, though we don’t think he did any of the actual negotiating with America.

    Hyde died in Paris in 1857 and the book of his “memoirs” is actually a collection of letters and notes compiled by his nieces.

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