Colonial Origins of American Diplomatic Principles

Abstract

In a survey of permanent bases of American diplomacy, published a few years ago, Mr. John W. Davis lists six doctrines which, as he says, seem to have run with reasonable persistence throughout course of American diplomacy. x These are, according to Mr. Davis, doctrine of isolation, Monroe Doctrine, doctrine of non-intervention, freedom of seas, open door, and pacific settlement of disputes. The first four Mr. Davis classifies as negative principles; other two he calls positive. For purposes of this paper, Mr. Davis's classification will be used. Now, in words of Mr. James Brown Scott, the foreign policy of a state or nation necessarily pre-supposes its existence as a political body. 2 Historians of American foreign policy have, therefore, generally begun their story with appointment of a Committee of Secret Correspondence by second Continental Congress and sending of Silas Deane abroad as agent of colonies on eve of American independence. Deane and American commissioners who followed him to Europe went with instructions which show that basic principles of subsequent American diplomacy were already well developed in minds of American leaders in Congress. Whence came diplomatic principles embodied in instructions of American representatives abroad? Were they formulated, as it were, out of nothing, and