Pinckney's Treaty: America's Advantage from Europe's Distress, 1783-1800 [Hardcover]

Samuel Flagg Bemis (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 372 pages
• Publisher: Praeger; New ed of 1960 ed edition (November 15, 1973)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0837169542
• ISBN-13: 978-0837169545
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,319,992 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Our 1795 Treaty with Spain - Waiting for and Seizing the Opportunity, January 10, 2010

By 

Leonard J. Wilson (VA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Pinckney's Treaty: America's Advantage from Europe's Distress, 1783-1800 (Revised edition) (Paperback)

Pinckney's Treaty, by Samuel Flagg Bemis, describes the diplomatic efforts that led to that treaty between the US and Spain in 1795. The issues underlying this treaty were:

1. Although Spain had provided covert financial aid to the American Revolution, it had not recognized the US as a sovereign, independent nation. Spain's reluctance to recognize the US was driven in large part by a fear that such recognition of a former British colony would put Spain at a disadvantage in controlling its own restless Latin American colonies.

2. The boundary between the US and Spanish West Florida (roughly the coast of the Gulf of Mexico westward from current state of Florida to the current state of Louisiana) was in dispute. The US maintained that the boundary was along the line of 31 degrees north latitude (a short distance north of the current northern border of Florida) while Spain's claims extended as far north as the great lakes.

3. The US claimed the right of navigation of the Mississippi River from its source to its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico. This right had been recognized by France when it controlled Louisiana but had been denied by Spain when it took possession of Louisiana from France and West Florida from Britain at the end of the American Revolution.

Negotiations to resolve these issues extended for over a decade after the end of the American Revolution in 1783. As in most changes in a nation's diplomatic strategy, Spain's eventual willingness to concede the above issues was not driven by a sudden change of heart. Rather, it was forced on Spain by external events, in this case the wars following the French Revolution. In alliance with Britain, Spain declared war on France in 1793. The war went badly for Spain when France invaded in 1794. That same year, Spain negotiated a separate peace with France, antagonizing its previous ally, Britain. Also in 1794, the US negotiated Jay's Treaty with Britain, resolving several boundary and commercial issues that had festered since the Treaty of Peace between then in 1783. (See my review of Professor Bemis' book on this topic.) The terms of Jay's Treaty were probably not known to Spain although the existence of the treaty was. Spain feared that these terms might include a US-British alliance against Spain. Professor Bemis stresses the impact of Spain's probable ignorance of these terms and fear of a possible US-British alliance in agreeing to sign Pinckney's Treaty with the US. (He includes a lengthy note rebutting another historian who makes a case that Spain might well have known the terms of Jay's Treaty. I don't see this as a significant factor in Spain's decision because secret provisions in treaties were common at the time and could have been an unpublished part of Jay's Treaty even if Spain were aware of the public provisions of the Treaty.)

Professor Bemis uses the case of Pinckney's Treaty to make the additional point that the astounding string of diplomatic successes that took the American Colonies from a fragile republic in 1783 to a continental power in less than a century was due more to the distraction of the European powers than to American genius. True, it took a fair amount of genius to seize the opportunities as Washington, Adams, Jefferson and their successors did. However, lacking the opportunities, their genius would not have prevailed.

Sadly, the many books written by Professor Bemis (1891-1973) are largely out of print. They still provide the best and most thorough introduction to early US diplomatic history that I have encountered. Happily, they are still readily available in Amazon's used book market.