{"id":4216,"date":"2022-01-22T13:08:17","date_gmt":"2022-01-22T13:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/?page_id=4216"},"modified":"2023-09-14T01:44:46","modified_gmt":"2023-09-14T01:44:46","slug":"revolutionary-diplomacy","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/course-syllabus\/revolutionary-diplomacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Revolutionary Diplomacy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Was American revolutionary era diplomacy truly revolutionary?<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n

CHAPTER 1:\u00a0 “To Begin the World Over Again”:\u00a0 Foreign Policy and the Birth of the Republic, 1776-1788<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a>“The Revolutionary generation held to an expansive vision, a certainty of their future greatness and destiny.\u00a0 They believed themselves a chosen people and brought to their interactions with others a certain self-righteousness and disdain for established practice.\u00a0 They saw themselves as harbingers of a new world order, creating forms of governance and commerce that would appeal to peoples everywhere and change the course of world history.\u00a0 ‘We have it in our power to begin the world over again,’ [Thomas] Paine wrote.\u00a0 Idealistic in their vision, in their actions Americans demonstrated a pragmatism born perhaps of necessity that helped ensure the success of their revolution and promulgation of the Constitution.”<\/p>\n

–George C. Herring,\u00a0From Colony to Superpower:\u00a0 U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776<\/em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 12.<\/p>\n