Revolutionary Negotiations

Revolutionary Negotiationsexamines early American diplomatic negotiations with both the European powers andthe various American Indian nations from the 1740s through the 1820s. Sadoskyinterweaves previously distinct settings for American diplomacy--courts and councilfires--into one singular, transatlantic system ofpolitics.Whether as provinces in the BritishEmpire or as independent states, American assertions of power were directedsimultaneously to the west and to the east--to Native American communities and toEuropean empires across the Atlantic. American leaders aspired to equality withEuropeans, who often dismissed them, while they were forced to concede agency toNative Americans, whom they often wished they could ignore. As Americans useddiplomatic negotiation to assert their new nation's equality with the great powersof Europe and gradually defined American Indian nations as possessing a different(and lesser) kind of sovereignty, they were also forced to confront the relationsbetween the states in their own federal union.Acts of diplomacy thus defined thefounding of America, not only by drawing borders and facilitating commerce, but alsoby defining and constraining sovereign power in a way that privileged some andweakened others. These negotiations truly were revolutionary.

Leonard J. Sadosky is Assistant Professor of History at Iowa State University.