Consuls in the Foreign Service of the USA
U.S. consuls in the early years[edit]
From 1798 to 1883 the foreign affairs of the United States were largely the responsibility of those wearing the gold braid of U.S. navy officers.[1] Since there were no formal diplomatic relationships with countries in many regions, the U.S. government often relied on those most experienced in trade relations – the consuls – to seize opportunities for commercial and diplomatic contacts. Early United States consuls were really chief merchant-agents, receiving but an administrative pittance (apart from "insider trading" information on port commerce) and issuing reports to the US Department of State on their circumscribed duties in safeguarding U.S. property and estates and caring for sailors and residents. U.S. consuls undertook an informal kind of proto-diplomacy as they functioned mostly to support commerce, acting on their own authority in support of the trading community. The U.S. government, while underwriting such functions, did nothing to guarantee legal protection for U.S. citizens or to accord judicial authority to consuls. In a notable case of 1821, an Italian sailor on the U.S. ship Emily, Francis Terranova, accidentally killed a Chinese woman. Chinese authorities demanded that Terranova be turned over to them, and executed him when the Americans complied.[citation needed]
Early in the 1830s, as part of U.S. interest in expanding competitively in the Pacific region and East Asia, President Andrew Jackson and Secretary of State Edward Livingston made initiatives toward strengthening the U.S. consular role, with respect to remuneration and the coordination of commercial and naval interests. Both were greatly influenced by the "activist" reports of Edmund Roberts, former American consul in Demerara (scene of the Demerara rebellion of 1823 that attracted British attention to the need to abolish slavery,) and by John Shillaber, the U.S. consul in Batavia (modern Jakarta).[2] Shillaber, a Massachusetts native, served as the U.S. consul in Batavia between 1825 and 1832, officially resigning from that post in 1835 while in China. In 1826, in Batavia, he tried unsuccessfully to secure the authority to sign treaties between the USA and Siam and other kingdoms in the East Indies, like Sumatra, where, in 1831, the native population attacked U.S. shipping (which resulted in the US Navy's First Sumatran expedition a year later.) While on leave in 1831, at the request of the Department of State, he prepared treaty outlines dealing with Japan, expressing hopeful opinions about the future of U.S.-Japan relations. In 1832 Secretary of the Navy Levi Woodbury, a leading proponent of increased naval power in China, used his influence to have President Jackson appoint his friend Roberts, rather than Shillaber, as a special envoy to look into treaty possibilities. In 1832 Roberts was awarded the commission to negotiate treaties that Shillaber still expected to receive. Then in 1833 he wrote to Secretary Woodbury stating the need for a naval force in Chinese and Philippine waters to counteract the coastal piracy of the infamous Ladrones (Thieves Islands). Shillaber was discouraged at being passed over for the assignment to Siam secured by Roberts, so in 1834 he attempted to gain the even more prestigious consular post at Canton. In his letters to President Jackson and to Secretary Livingston describing the post-monopoly, pre-treaty political and commercial situation, Shillaber attempted to define himself as a "China expert" and diplomatic pundit. Shillaber's detailed correspondence preserved in his own hand among the U.S. consular despatches in the National Archives in Washington, is remarkably prescient with respect to the inevitability of Sino-British hostilities and the need to define a more assertive U.S. position in China. He recommended that U.S. consuls have official power to represent the government before the Chinese authorities, protect the property and rights of U.S. citizens, make vigorous efforts to open more ports to trade, and that the U.S.A. maintain an armed naval presence in East Asian waters. Significantly, Shillaber felt that U.S. policy should have another purpose, namely, to show the Chinese that Americans were a breed apart, different from other Westerners, especially the British, who came to do business, assume control, and wreak havoc in China.[3]
Following Roberts' treaty with Said bin Sultan, Sultan of Muscat and Oman,[4] Richard Waters, a native of Salem, Massachusetts, was appointed American consul from 1837 to 1845 in Zanzibar; Gilbert gives an account of the difficulties facing a neophyte American consul.[5]
References[edit]
- ↑ Long, David Foster (1988). Gold braid and foreign relations : diplomatic activities of U.S. naval officers, 1798-1883. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 9780870212284. Archived from the original on 23 October 2015. Retrieved 29 April 2012. Lay summary (February 1990). Search this book on
- ↑ See the diplomatic lists in Debates in Congress, 22nd Cong., 2nd sess., vol. 9 (appendix), pp. 131–132.
- ↑ Gedalecia, David (2002). "Letters from the Middle Kingdom : The Origins of America's China Policy". Prologue Magazine. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. 34 (4). Archived from the original on 7 May 2017. Retrieved 20 March 2017.
- ↑ Cotheal, Alexander I. (17 January 2008). "Treaty between the United States of America and the Sultân of Masḳaṭ: The Arabic Text". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 4 (1854): 341–343. JSTOR 592284.
- ↑ Gilbert, Wesley John (April 2011). Our Man in Zanzibar: Richard Waters, American Consul (1837-1845) (B.A. Thesis). Departmental Honors in History. thesis advisor, Professor Kirk Swinehart. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University. Archived from the original on 5 May 2012. Retrieved 3 May 2012. Search this book on
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