Book Review of Proslavery Foreign Policy by Doron Ben-Atar

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A Proslavery Foreign Policy: Haitian-American Relations during the Early Republic
Ben-Atar, DoronThe Journal of Southern History
A Proslavery Foreign Policy: Haitian-American Relations during the Early Republic

Byline: Ben-Atar, Doron
Volume: 71
Number: 1
ISSN: 00224642
Publication Date: 02-01-2005
Page: 146
Type: Periodical
Language: English

A Proslavery Foreign Policy: Haitian-American Relations during the Early Republic. By Tim Matthewson. (Westport, Conn., and London: Praeger, 2003. Pp. xii, 159. $64.95, ISBN 0-275-98002-2.)

Tim Matthewson skillfully examines the evolution of official United States policy toward the rebelling colony of Saint Domingue and, later, the independent state of Haiti. As the title of the book suggests, Matthewson argues that the protection of slavery was the organizing principle of American diplomacy in the Caribbean. The book goes beyond this familiar argument and explains policy shifts as reactions to the twists and turns of events on the island. Matthewson's analysis of the racially motivated American reaction calls into question any Eurocentric interpretation of the history of American foreign relations during the Wars of the French Revolution.

Just by placing Saint Domingue front and center, the book challenges the worn-out and hopelessly dated historical narrative of foreign relations during this period. It is indeed a pleasant surprise that a concise account by a 1970s student of Alexander DeConde who did not follow a career in academia can offer such a useful corrective to the standard synthesis of the period, Stanley Elkins's and Eric McKitrick's The Age of Federalism (New York, 1993). Our understanding of the era's turning points, from the Jay Treaty to the War of 1812, from the quasi-war with France to the Louisiana Purchase, is terribly incomplete when it is not placed in the context of the upheaval in Saint Domingue. Matthewson points out, for example, that James Stephen's 1805 War in Disguise, long considered a chauvinist anti-American pamphlet representative of the narrow interests of British mercantile houses, originated in Stephen's antislavery convictions and that his primary goal was "to eradicate the slave trade" (p. 123).

Matthewson does not draw an ideological distinction between Federalist and Jeffersonian policies. Policy differences, he persuasively argues, derived from sectional origins. Southerners George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison devised a foreign policy that protected slavery whereas northerner John Adams overlooked race and set out a policy of cooperation with the former slaves. Washington ordered that the treasury direct payments of the American debt to France toward the planters fighting the insurrection. Adams, on the other hand, appointed senior representative Edward Stevens the American liaison with Toussaint L'Ouverture and had the American navy gloriously fight side by side with former slaves. The Revolution of 1800 terminated Haitian-American cooperation. Jefferson replaced Stevens with a minor commercial agent and refused to have anything to do with the de facto governors of the island. Jefferson promised to give material support to Charles Leclerc's expedition that set out to re-conquer the island and restore slavery and, after that mission failed, embargoed American trade with Haiti.

There is one glaring gap in Matthewson's account. The book for the most part skips the crucial five years, 1793 to 1798, when former slaves struggled to define freedom on the island and fought against British invaders. During this era, L'Ouverture emerged as the leader of the rebellion and effective ruler of the island. Matthewson's solid rendering does not equal the movingly passionate prose of Michael Zuckerman's "The Power of Blackness: Thomas Jefferson and the Revolution in St. Domingue," in his wonderful collection of essays, Almost Chosen People: Oblique Biographies in the American Grain (Berkeley, 1993). Still, Matthewson has put together an interesting and informed analysis of the evolution of proslavery diplomacy as the cornerstone of foreign policy in the early republic.
AUTHOR_AFFILIATION
DORON BEN-ATAR

Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman

Center for Scholars and Writers

New York Public Library

Copyright Southern Historical Association Feb 2005