Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Felix Gilbert

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TO THE FAREWELL ADDRESS

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Foreword..........................................................................................vCHAPTER I. THE COLONIES AND EUROPE................................................................3CHAPTER II. INSULA FORTUNATA: The English Pattern for American Foreign Policy.....................19CHAPTER III. NOVUS ORDO SECULORUM: Enlightenment Ideas on Diplomacy...............................44CHAPTER IV. RATIO STATUS: Foreign Policy in Practice..............................................76CHAPTER V. WASHINGTON'S POLITICAL TESTAMENT: The Farewell Address.................................115Appendix..........................................................................................137Bibliographical Essay.............................................................................149Index.............................................................................................171

Chapter One

I

"We are as near to Heaven by sea as by land." These are the last known words of Sir Humfrey Gilbert, the first Englishman who conceived of a settlement of English people on the North American continent. In the name of his Great Queen, Sir Humfrey had taken possession of New Foundland, which, he hoped, would provide riches for himself, his family, his friends, and his country. On his return voyage to England, a storm swept away part of his fleet, leaving only the Golden Hind and Sir Humfrey's flagship, the tiny Squirrel. Before these two ships were torn apart by another storm, in which the Squirrel foundered with all on board, the men of the Golden Hind could see Sir Humfrey sitting on the quarterdeck of the Squirrel and reading. What he read excited him to this exclamation.

The book in Sir Humfrey's hands must have been the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, for it contains the thought which stimulated Sir Humfrey: "the way to heaven out of all places is of like length and distance." More's Utopia was a strangely fitting book for Sir Humfrey to read. Behind Sir Humfrey's plans for a settlement in New Foundland, there was not only the anticipation of gaining great wealth, but also the hope of creating an ideal life and society. Thus, the first Englishman who envisaged plantations of his countrymen on the North American continent was driven by two incentives which in the following centuries inspired the astounding growth of the English colonies. The promise of financial rewards and the belief in the possibility and necessity of constructing a more perfect social order were the two motives which led people to embark on the dangerous voyage to the New World. Different—almost contradictory—as these two motives were, they existed together, tightly intertwined in the development of the various English settlements on American soil.

Each motive implied one of two distinct and contrary attitudes to the Old World. The economic motive necessitated close ties with Europe. Great profits could result only from the cultivation and production of goods for export. Pursuit of these activities required bonds with England; business contacts with the London merchants and personal connections with members of the ruling aristocracy, who promoted colonial schemes in the expectation of quick enrichment, had to be maintained. The Utopian motive favored separation from European affairs. The hope of leading a more perfect life on the new continent formed a resistance to involvements with Europe. The attempt to realize a better social order presupposed a critical view of the values of the Old World and aroused a fear of ties which might spread the diseases of Europe to America.

In New England, where the settlers had entered into a covenant with God, so that this area might be preserved as the only center of true religion, the Puritan leaders felt themselves worlds removed from other colonies. They looked down with contempt upon the manners and customs which the riches from tobacco production were creating in Virginia. Nothing worse could be imagined than 'that New England might become "like the rest of the Nations, being grown into the same conformity to the World, with other Plantations."

It would be wrong, however, to accept the Puritans' own evaluation of New England's unique position. It should not be assumed that the religious plantations—Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, and Connecticut—were fundamentally different from the rest of the English colonies on the North American continent. The power of the theocracy to subordinate worldly activities to the ideal of a society organized for the purposes of God weakened in New England even before the first generation of settlers had died. From the middle of the seventeenth century, the inhabitants of New England were frequently reminded by their ministers that "New England is originally a plantation of religion, not a plantation of trade." Admonishments against vanity and the sinfulness of luxury, and warnings against the danger of forgetting the true aims of life, increased in number and vehemence in the course of the seventeenth century. At last, it came to be admitted that wealth and prosperity might be a sign of God's special regard for the people of New England who lived under the covenant. It had not been possible to restrict economic activities to farming; trade with other colonies and with England had become more and more important. A merchant class, occupied with worldly concerns and far-flung interests, began to play the leading role in the social life of New England.

Although originally the prevalence of a self-sufficing village economy in the North and of large plantations producing tobacco for export in the South had given the social life of North and South a different pattern, this dividing line soon became blurred. Nor was there a separation between North and South because the settlement in these two regions had been undertaken for different motives. Not all the northern colonies were religious foundations, nor were all the southern colonies solely commercial enterprises. Maine and New Hampshire were proprietary colonies, settled primarily for profit and advantage. On the other hand, the hopes for economic gains which had led a group of London merchants to plant Virginia and had stimulated a number of British aristocrats to found the Carolinas were not the only inducements to settle in the southern part of the North American continent. Sir George Calvert's wish to find a refuge for English Catholics, William Penn's interest in creating a community in which Quakers could live according to their ideals, Oglethorpe's aim to ameliorate the situation of debt-prisoners—these motives, imbued with humanitarian, religious, and Utopian elements, lay behind the foundations of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. Although the English promoters of American colonies might have been exclusively interested in the economic aspects of their enterprises, the men whom they persuaded to sail over the ocean and transform the wilderness into a productive land were often those to whom life in Europe had become unbearable and who, perhaps vaguely and almost unconsciously, carried into the New World the dream of a different, of a better, more just social order....