International Arbitration: The Czar and the Slaves

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The United States early years are characterized as a period of active territorial expansion, economic development, and the growth of internal contradictions. At this time, the formation of the American state was completed, the country reached its modern continental borders (through treaties, purchases, and wars), domestic communications (first canals, then railroads) were rapidly developing. Politically, the U.S. balanced the free North and the slave-holding South, which competed for the fast-growing West. The South developed a plantation system based on the slavery of African Americans, which led to the emergence of the anti-slavery movement (abolitionism). The rapid growth of the territory exacerbated the dispute over the fate of the new states whether they were to be free or slave states. This was a crucial precondition for the Civil War that broke out in the country.

During the first years of the country formation, three aspects of U.S. external politics were acquiring lands, national defense, and maintaining foreign commerce. Under Thomas Jeffersons administration, the U.S. first expanded by purchasing territories (Spear, 2018). For example, the acquisition of Louisiana from France is considered a significant event in the countrys early history. It was roughly the same size as the territory that the States had previously possessed. The outbreak of war with Great Britain was unavoidable for many reasons. Great Britain sought to undermine U.S. maritime trade, violated the rights of neutral navigation, seized American ships and their crews under the pretext of looking for English deserted sailors. Canada, however, remained British, and in August 1814, the English corps entered Washington.

The early 1800s is characterized as a time when the foreign policy foundations of the young nation. Every party that came to power in the country sought to secure its borders and push back European rivals. In this connection, the Pacific basin and East Asia became one of the areas of U.S. expansion. Hence, the purposeful struggle to possess naval bases in the Pacific Ocean on the approaches to the Asian mainland. The United States saw its mission in strengthening its presence in Latin America, establishing a bridgehead on the Caribbean Sea islands.

Alexander Hamilton, a prominent politician during the War of Independence and the U.S. founding, called for creating a comprehensive American system beyond the control and influence of European countries. It should have been capable of dictating the terms of relations between the Old and the New World. In 1820, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Clay formulated the position that predetermined the commonality of economic interests of the North, Central, and South America under the U.S. hegemony (Ostdiek and Witt, 2021). As new territories were developed and expanded, new states were created.

Once again, the U.S. used the big stick policy armed interference in the affairs of Latin American countries, in its relations with Colombia, with the issue of the interoceanic canal as an excuse. This strategy was combined with dollar diplomacy: the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Nicaragua became economically dependent on the United States (Hollenbeck, 2020). American companies monopolized the lucrative fruit trade in Bolivia, Chile, Peru, and Argentina. In Mexico, U.S. investment was over a billion dollars or a quarter of U.S. investment abroad. Given its relative military weakness in the Far East, the U.S. focused on supporting Japanese aggression against China and Korea to exploit Japans successes to its advantage. Thus, ensuring stable and profitable trade and protecting external borders were achieved through the intensive occupation of territories or financial control over them.

U.S. foreign policy was weakened to some extent by the debilitating war with Great Britain, which was fought with mixed success. Britain was not very agreeable to its former colonies seceding and forming an independent state, so every excuse was used to force America back into the fold of the British Empire. In 1814 British troops even captured Washington and destroyed virtually all of its public buildings in two days (Achenbach, 2021). But the extraordinary heroism shown by American soldiers forced the British to retreat. After the war was over, Great Britain officially recognized the independence of the United States of America and no longer attempted to infringe on its sovereignty.

Despite the end of the war, there were still many disputes between the U.S. and Great Britain. These were primarily resolved in the postwar negotiations that led to the Anglo-American Convention of 1818 (Ostdiek and Witt, 2019). The remaining unresolved issues, such as the status of the present-day Northwest United States, were settled in the 1842 Webster-Ashburton Treaty (Longley, 2019) and the 1846 Oregon Treaty (Noakes, 2021). The conclusion of these treaties helped to strengthen the U.S. position at that time.

Thus, the nature of U.S. foreign politics since the establishment of the country has been purely practical. By the end of the XIX century, the products of American manufacturers in many respects became superior to their European counterparts, and the domestic market was packed. Therefore, the state-directed its forces on the intensive displacement of European competitors and the conquest of foreign markets of the Western hemisphere and the Pacific region. In addition, the promotion of American products in the Old World was of no small importance.

References

Achenbach, Joel, In 1814, British forces burned the U.S. Capitol, The Washington Post.

Hollenbeck, Rachel, Lending a Helping Hand: Dollar Diplomacy in Latin America, Undergraduate Research Journal 24, no. 3 (2020): 25-40. Web.

Longley, Robert, The Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842: How the Treaty Smoothed US-Canadian Relations, ThoughtCo.

Noakes, Taylor C, Oregon Treaty, The Canadian Encyclopedia.

Ostdiek, Bennett, and John Fabian Witt, The Czar and the Slaves: Two Puzzles in the History of International Arbitration,American Journal of International Law 113, no. 3 (2019): 53567.

Spear, Jennifer M, The Louisiana Purchase: Liberty, Slavery, and the Incorporation of the Territory of Orleans, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History.

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International Arbitration: The Czar and the Slaves

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