The American Revolution and the Habsburg Monarchy by Jonathan Singerton

Abstract

Reviewed by: The American Revolution and the Habsburg Monarchy by Jonathan Singerton Eric Grube Jonathan Singerton, The American Revolution and the Habsburg Monarchy. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2022. 366 pp. Jonathan Singerton's The American Revolution and the Habsburg Monarchy accomplishes a revolutionary feat: centering agents and actors from Habsburg lands within the transoceanic processes and upheavals that marked the early revolutionary Atlantic. Singerton argues that Habsburg inhabitants were neither diametrically opposed to the ideals and movements of the revolutionary era nor hermetically sealed off from them. He thus overturns any teleological assumptions that this dynasty—which would wage war against Revolutionary France and would come to embody post-Napoleonic conservatism—rejected outright the American revolutionary project and the fledgling United States. Instead, Singerton argues that merchants, trade representatives, diplomats, [End Page 111] bureaucrats, royals, soldiers, and everyday subjects were integral to the story of the new republic's foundation. Singerton also successfully identifies, narrates, and interprets the bi- and even multilateral dynamics at play, showing how American revolutionaries shaped Habsburg imperial calculations, capital speculations, and material transactions. Singerton succeeds in his main goal of reorienting our sense of who, what, and where constitutes Atlantic history, but he also succeeds in a much more nuanced way: taking what might lend itself to a "traditional," top-down story of high-stakes diplomacy and presenting it from economic and cultural perspectives. Singerton's economic and cultural emphases shed light on the multifaceted sinews stitching together international with intercontinental connections and domestic with foreign affairs across the two sides of the Atlantic. Each chapter examines the topic from a particular optic, ranging from Habsburg intellectual and religious discourses concerning the Americas before the revolution to legal histories of neutrality and neutral shipping that turned the Austrian Netherlands into a wartime commercial nexus. The military stories on offer explore epistolary evidence of eager volunteers from Habsburg Europe seeking to place themselves under Benjamin Franklin's command, while Singerton also presents convincing data concerning commodity exchange between American ports and the Habsburg entrepôts of Ostend, Trieste, and Livorno. His work also rightfully places cultural history front and center, diving deeply into the intricacies of statecraft protocols and etiquette, the perceived breach of which could have had monumental ramifications. His focus on regional histories reveals fascinating tensions between bureaucrats in the Austrian Netherlands and ministers in the metropole of Vienna. What's more, he uncovers the complex international elements at play, as many of these conversations and networks played out via Tuscan networks (among others) in Paris. The resulting book is a tour de force, one that showcases the plurality of ways in which Habsburg inhabitants not just flirted with American revolutionary ideas and overtures but often actively sought to capitalize on new opportunities for mercantile gain and diplomatic prestige. Regardless of a given reader's research focus or interest, one can find in Singerton's work a multitude of fresh ways to conceptualize Habsburg and Atlantic histories. While The American Revolution and the Habsburg Monarchy certainly soars, there are a few ways in which Singerton could have elevated the work to new heights. At times he seems at risk of overplaying his hand regarding the roles of Habsburg inhabitants in the early revolutionary Atlantic. The [End Page 112] extent to which the trade bubble at Ostend burst when the American War of Independence concluded, when other ports again became viable nodes of exchange, could suggest this U.S.-Habsburg trade was neither sustainable nor as desired as is suggested. Indeed, the monograph seems to have a tone of "opportunities lost" by the failure to solidify diplomatic recognition and formal trade agreements between the Habsburg realms and the United States until the nineteenth century. But perhaps in context, these agents saw a rejection of such options as their best strategies for advancement. It would also be interesting to read more about how internal fissures and distinctions within Habsburg holdings—territorial, legal, administrative, and customary—influenced the American Revolution or were in turn influenced by the American Revolution. Singerton addresses these in detail regarding the Austrian Netherlands and Vienna, plus the intra-imperial jockeying for trade between agents in Ostend and Trieste. And he excels...