A Call to Revolution: A Roundtable on Early U.S. Foreign Relations

Extract

The authors in this roundtable urge historians of U.S. foreign relations to show renewed interest in the revolutionary and early national eras. They argue that the formation of the early republic was, first and foremost, an event in international history. European entry into the Western Hemisphere – with the expansion of trade in an increasingly globalized economy, the introduction of firearms and implements of all sorts, the dispersal of contagions, and the pressure to enlarge hunting grounds for fur and skins – affected ongoing struggles for power among native inhabitants and among European states. New networks of alliances became possible for groups on both sides of the Atlantic, and out of these complex and shifting international relationships, “Americans” constructed ideologies of national identity, created a new “nation” through a union of states, and envisioned a new world order – a novus ordo seclorum – based upon principles of federalism and liberal capitalism.