Americans Overseas in the Early American Republic

Abstract While the Early American Republic continues to be largely neglected by diplomatic historians, it has been attracting vibrant new historiography taking the “global turn.” This forum showcases studies by Nancy Shoemaker, Emily Conroy-Krutz, Rachel Tamar Van, and Courtney Fullilove. Each examines Americans venturing overseas at a time when their secondhand knowledge and firsthand experience of the world was woefully limited. The Early American Republic indicates that we must interrogate a fraught process of globalizing before we can presume any existence of global interconnection. By the 1830s the outcome of American ventures was a world with increasingly more Americans in it.