Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States, 1607-1788 Book

Students and teachers often fail to undermine the role that foreign powers played in the independence of the United States. One possible reason for this may be the unwillingness to scrutinize all evidence currently available to scholars. Samuel Bemis Flagg's The Diplomacy of the American Revolution attempts to foster a new understanding of the direct role that European powers played in influencing the terms of war and peace in the American Revolution through examination of primary source documents by all nations involved.
By utilizing "…American, British, French, and Spanish sources, printed and unprinted and…notable monographs by scholars who have exploited parts of these and also Dutch, Scandinavian, Russian, Prussian, and Austrian Archives," Bemis expounds on the European role in the formation of war and peace with Britain. While most accounts of the American Revolution downplay Spain's role in the imbroglio, Bemis argues that the Spanish complicated France's efforts to get into and out of the war. Such complications fall back on Bourbon France and Spain's Family Compact, the agreement between the two nations to act in tandem in foreign affairs. Represented by Minister of Foreign Affairs Charles Gravier de Vergennes and José Moñino, Count of Floridablanca respectively, France and Spain engaged in European style double dealing diplomacy where ulterior motives directed the course of their actions. For France, financially winded and bereft of American territories, altering Britain's favorable position in the balance of power proved the sole motivation for its involvement in the Revolution, while Spain anticipated territorial expansion, most particularly the desire to capture Gibraltar from Britain.
Attempting to achieve the Spanish motive even directed the two ministers to act in ways contradictory to the independence effort, including entertaining the British on signing a truce that guaranteed Americans less than full independence in 1781 and holding out on recognizing American independence after the war came to a conclusion in 1782. While Bemis endows the French and Spanish court in this revamp of the American Revolution, he does not undermine the power of the American diplomacy. Benjamin Franklin, while endeared to and the preferred diplomat of Vergennes, earns the respect of Bemis as an effective diplomat and US representative. While in France, Franklin's propaganda endears the French to the American cause. Yet later, undermining the Franco-American alliance, Franklin attempts to negotiate Canada from British agent Richard Oswald. Likewise, Bemis states that the Americans and the British concluded their own treaty without the direct involvement of the other European powers. This treaty did not touch on the extra-territorial arrangements contingent on the peace of the Europeans, but concerned American independence, boundaries, and rights. As a result, the British came out with only modest territorial loses (America), but gained other territories, kept Gibraltar, remained armed, and came out a commercial partner of the United States.
Backing his claim to provide to the historiography, Bemis loads The Diplomacy of the American Revolution with documentation from his domestic and international primary sources. The book flows nicely, though tends to deny the reader the full name or significance of some of its many actors. A key to the participants in the appendix would alleviate this, though this would be rare in a book originally written in 1935. Chapter titles also tend to be non-descript and unimaginative. Examples of this: "France and Spain in 1777," "Austria and Spain in 1778," and "The Imperial Mediators and France in 1781" lack punch and do not match the intrigue of the narrative. Despite these minor indiscretions, Bemis puts forth a fascinating book where the main characters in the theater of the American Revolution are not necessarily American.
In order to capture the perplexity of power politics of the late eighteenth century and its role on the American Revolution, one must consider all sources available. The Diplomacy of the American Revolution does this. In doing so, Bemis relays the broader context in which the Revolution occurred, even identifying some of the effects to come from the decision making of this period, such as the fall of the Bourbon monarchy in France and future quarrels over wording in the treaties. As a result, Bemis' book remains pertinent to the understanding of the period in which the American Revolution took place.