Pragmatic, ad hoc Foreign-Policy Making of the Early Republic: Thomas H. Perkins's Boston-Smyrna-Canton Opium Model and Congressional Rejection of Aid for Greek Independence

In 1823, Edward Everett launched a fundraising drive in Boston to support Greeks fighting for independence from the Ottoman Empire, and he co-opted his mentor Daniel Webster to move a pro-Greek resolution in Congress. Thomas Handasyd Perkins, Boston's leading China Trade merchant, had recently revolutionised his trading model with Canton by replacing loss-making specie with high-profit Turkish opium; his mercantile operation was earning over $1 million a year and adding millions more to Boston's economy. Perkins was therefore furious with Everett because if Congress aided the Greeks then the Ottomans would surely embargo US trade. Under the nom de plume 'A Merchant', Perkins wrote to the Boston Daily Advertiser emphasising the centrality of Turkish opium to Boston's economy, and hinting at George Washington's injunction against political alliances. Everett got the message. He formed a committee but its memorial to Congress merely waxed eloquent in support of Greek independence, advising against aid because of Washington's counsel. When the House debated Webster's resolution, it met unexpected opposition, particularly from a Boston representative, and Webster quietly acquiesced in a tabling vote. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams also made clear that support would make nonsense of the newly promulgated Monroe Doctrine. Perkins's enthusiasm for opium smuggling and Bostonians' dependence on the profits he created provides the justification for Adams's aversion to the Greek cause and Everett's and Webster's retreat, highlighting the pragmatic, ad hoc nature of foreign-policy making during the Early Republic as well as the praxis underscoring the ironies inherent within US ideology. Perkins's successful lobbying for trade with Muslim Turks at the expense of liberty for Christian Greeks extended to patronage; he gave loans and preferential share offerings to his Bostonian friends, Webster and Adams. As President, Adams appropriated $20,000 to negotiate a most-favoured-nation treaty with Turkey, which led to the establishment of a US embassy in Istanbul during Andrew Jackson's presidency.