4 - The United States and the Atlantic System in the Nineteenth Century

Summary

This chapter traces the United States’ status concerns from the early nineteenth century leading up to the 1856 Declaration of Paris. It examines the US approach to the maritime laws of war during this period and derives expectations for how the United States would react to an international agreement such as the Declaration of Paris from two competing perspectives: material interests and IST. It tests these hypotheses through a detailed account of the US approach to the international maritime order from the 1820s, when the United States began rising, to 1856, when the Declaration of Paris became the first universal instrument of international law; as well as in the opening stages of the Civil War when the Union government strongly considered signing the Declaration. It finds that contrary to the commercial interests and status aspirations that influenced initial US support for the maritime laws of war, the country’s leaders rejected the Declaration of Paris and sought to undermine it through an alternative (failed) treaty, because the United States was excluded from the deliberations leading to the Declaration and US leaders viewed the Declaration as relegating America to the status of a second-rate power.