American Machiavelli: Alexander Hamilton and the Origins of U.S. Foreign Policy

Journal of Southern History, August, 2005 by Jerald A. Combs

American Machiavelli: Alexander Hamilton and the Origins of U.S. Foreign Policy. By John Lamberton Harper. (New York and other cities: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xiv, 347. $30.00, ISBN 0-521-83485-6.)

In this book, John Lamberton Harper juxtaposes the strategic thought and actions of Alexander Hamilton, the ultimate American realist, with those of the Italian father of modern realism, Niccolo Machiavelli. While not based on wide multiarchival research, Harper's book uses the vast array of published documents on the founders of the American republic and an intelligent reading of the best secondary sources on Machiavelli and Hamilton to produce a judicious interpretation of the key events in the history of Hamilton's foreign policy and an intriguing interpretation of how Hamilton's approach corresponded to Machiavelli's analysis of events in his own time. For instance, Hamilton (probably unknowingly) echoed Machiavelli when, during the Nootka Sound Crisis of 1790, he advised Washington to consent to a potential British request to cross American territory in order to attack Spanish possessions in Florida and Louisiana. Hamilton warned that the United States did not have the power to prevent such an expedition, a war would be ruinous, and America might even profit by joining the British and securing New Orleans. Likewise, Machiavelli had, on the one hand, criticized Florence for refusing Cesare Borgia's request to cross Florentine territory on his way to Rome. Such defiance in the face of an enemy that could not be resisted cost Florence great physical destruction that might have been avoided. On the other hand, Machiavelli said that if Borgia had not asked permission, it would have been better to fight rather than endure such a humiliation. Hamilton's advice to Washington had been exactly the same; if Washington felt compelled to refuse Britain's request, then the United States should stand and fight.

Harper finds many similar instances in which Hamilton and Machiavelli offered parallel realist analyses and advice, with both statesmen insisting that power rather than sentiments such as gratitude and ideology should determine a nation's conduct and that policy makers had to be willing "to be not good" when national interest or survival was at stake (pp. 28, 33). But Harper is most enlightening when he insists on the romantic expansionist streak that vied with the prudent, realistic, and cautious elements of Hamilton's mind and psyche. Most historians cite Hamilton's conduct in appeasing Great Britain with the Jay Treaty and favoring an evenhanded approach in dealing with France prior to the Quasi-War of 1798 as proof of his realistic restraint in seeking always to balance his goals with the power available and in avoiding wars that, however in conformance they might have been with his ideological biases and thirst for military glory, would have endangered the survival of the new nation. Harper insists, however, that Hamilton opposed John Adams's attempts to end the Quasi-War with France so that Hamilton could lead an Anglo-American invasion southward to obtain New Orleans and an expansive American empire. Thus he concludes that Hamilton's foreign-policy legacy included romantic imperialism as well as realistic restraint. As Harper points out, even this was in line with Machiavelli's belief that a nation must either "molest or be molested" and must expand over other political societies even if only to ward off decline for a while (quoted on p. 271).

San Francisco State University

JERALD A. COMBS