Reviews of Books

Reviewed by James E. Lewis Jr., Kalamazoo College

On the surface, Alexander Hamilton would seem an odd choice for a series entitled "Biographies in American Foreign Policy." Not only was he never president or secretary of state, Hamilton never served in the state department and never even held a diplomatic post abroad. Nonetheless, Lawrence S. Kaplan (a dean in the field of early American diplomatic history) makes a persuasive case that Hamilton's foreign policy thinking deserves serious consideration. The resulting study offers a counterpart to his biography of Jefferson, also in this series.1	1
For Kaplan, Hamilton's contribution to American foreign policy can only be understood in the context of his nationalism. Kaplan presents Hamilton as a precocious nationalist. From his speeches and publications during the imperial crisis of the 1770s to his understanding of the shortcomings of the Confederation during the 1780s and from his defense of the new Constitution during the ratification debates to his reports on credit, banking, and manufactures as secretary of the treasury in the early 1790, Hamilton was almost always ahead of the vast majority of his contemporaries. Behind all of Hamilton's policies, foreign and domestic, was a confidence that, by adopting the right measures, the United States could rise into the ranks of the most powerful and prosperous nations. At the same time, Hamilton worried that the American public or the various states or demagogic politicians would defeat these measures, threatening not only his expectations, but also American nationhood.	2
Thus, for Hamilton, order at home always appeared essential for success abroad. Recognizing this linkage serves Kaplan well. It allows him to examine in depth Hamilton's most important acts—his efforts to strengthen the Confederation, his contributions to The Federalist, and his measures to establish American credit—rather than to concentrate solely on his often more peripheral role in foreign policymaking. Hamilton's advice to President Washington on such matters as Nootka Sound and neutrality, his meetings with British officials, his orchestration of the Jay mission, his private instructions for President Adams's cabinet during the Quasi-War, and his public criticisms of President Jefferson over Louisiana receive ample coverage. But Kaplan does not have to overemphasize them because he understands the strong "foreign" dimension of Hamilton's "domestic" policies.	3
In Kaplan's hands, Hamilton's understanding of the connection between domestic order and foreign success also helps to explain the "ambivalence" of his anglophilia. Hamilton admired the British system, in this account, because it had produced a prosperous and powerful nation. Applying the British lesson to the new American government could bring the same result. At the same time, the American economy could not yet be weaned from British credit, markets, and manufactures. Hamilton saw Great Britain as a model and a trading partner (and, after 1793, as a bastion against revolutionary France). But, in Kaplan's view, Hamilton's anglophilia never undermined his commitment to a United States that would, in time, become more prosperous and more powerful than Great Britain itself.	. . .