The American Union and the Problem of Neighborhood: The United States and the Collapse of the Spanish Empire, 1783-1829 - Softcover

Lewis Jr., James E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807847364 ISBN 13: 9780807847367

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998

Synopsis

In this book, James Lewis demonstrates the centrality of American ideas about and concern for the union of the states in the policymaking of the early republic. For four decades after the nation's founding in the 1780s, he says, this focus on securing a union operated to blur the line between foreign policies and domestic concerns. Such leading policymakers as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Henry Clay worried about the challenges to the goals of the Revolution that would arise from a hostile neighborhood-whether composed of new nations outside the union or the existing states following a division of the union. At the center of Lewis's story is the American response to the dissolution of Spain's empire in the New World, from the transfer of Louisiana to France in 1800 to the independence of Spain's mainland colonies in the 1820s. The breakup of the Spanish empire, he argues, presented a series of crises for the unionist logic of American policymakers, leading them, finally, to abandon a crucial element of the distinctly American approach to international relations embodied in their own federal union.

About this title

About the Author

James E. Lewis Jr. is assistant professor of history at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

From the Back Cover

Uses the American response to the dissolution of Spain's empire in the New World (1783-1829) to demonstrate that American concern for the union of the states was a major factor in the policymaking of the early republic.

Edition details

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807847364
• ISBN 13: 9780807847367
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320