Jay contract

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The Jay Treaty of November 19, 1794 was concluded between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the USA and resolved current tensions and disputes between the two countries as well as those resulting from the American War of Independence .

prehistory

Relations between Great Britain and the United States, strained by the War of Independence, deteriorated significantly in the early 1790s. The complaints on the American side included the seizure of American shipments and ships in connection with the Revolutionary Wars against France , the forcing of American seamen into the service of the British Royal Navy and the continued occupation of forts, such as Fort Oswego and Fort Niagara, which were actually owned by the United States, by British troops . On the British side, the United States was accused of providing shelter for deserters and of undermining the blockade against France.

Terms of contract

In 1794, John Jay , Chairman of the Supreme Court ( Chief Justice of the United States ), traveled to England to seek an agreement and avoid war. The main points of the treaty signed by him and the British Foreign Minister William Wyndham Grenville on November 19, 1794 included the withdrawal of British troops from the border forts in the USA and the establishment of an equal commission to settle disputes over the course of the border with British Canada to clean. The latter can be seen as the beginning of international arbitration . A second commission was set up to find a balance between the damage caused by British seizures of American ships and the losses of loyalists who had been deported or fled from the USA . Finally, the treaty allowed the US limited trade rights with the British colonies in the Caribbean . It did not include the British renouncing the use of American seamen in the Royal Navy .

consequences

In the US, the Jay contract caused massive disputes and public uproar. Ex-Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton supported him, the future President Thomas Jefferson fought him. Finally it was signed by President George Washington and ratified in the Senate on June 24, 1795 . The contract was extremely unpopular with the public, and Hamilton was pelted with stones by an angry crowd in New York City . For the first time Washington was publicly criticized; Jay resigned from his post with the Supreme Court, later suggesting that lighting public burns of Jay dolls would have allowed him to travel across the country.

Even if the treaty did not resolve all disputes between the United States and Great Britain or settled them to the satisfaction of the Americans, it was arguably the best that could be achieved at the time. In 1806 US diplomats James Monroe and William Pinkney negotiated the Monroe-Pinkney Treaty with the British , which was supposed to renew the Jay Treaty. The contract was signed on August 27, 1806 by both sides. However, US President Thomas Jefferson refused in March 1807 to submit the treaty to the Senate for ratification. The treaty never came into force. Unresolved issues such as the forced recruitment of American seafarers ultimately led to the British-American War of 1812 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Jay contract of 1794 at books.google.de, pp. 187-190, accessed on November 18, 2015.

Literature (english)

  • Samuel Flagg Bemis: Jay's Treaty: A Study in Commerce and Diplomacy. 1923. (remains the standard narrative of how treaty was written)
  • Joseph Charles: The Jay Treaty: The Origins of the American Party System. In: William and Mary Quarterly. 3rd Ser., Vol. 12, No. 4, Oct 1955, pp. 581-630. (in JSTOR)
  • Jerald. A. Combs: The Jay Treaty: Political Background of Founding Fathers. 1970, ISBN 0-520-01573-8 . (Focusing on the domestic and ideological aspects, Combs dislikes Hamilton's quest for national power and a "heroic state" dominating the Western Hemisphere, but concludes the Federalists "followed the proper policy" because the treaty preserved peace with Britain)
  • Stanley M. Elkins, Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800. 1994, chapter 9.
  • Todd Estes: The Art of Presidential Leadership: George Washington and the Jay Treaty. In: Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. vol 109, no.2, 2001.
  • Todd Estes: Shaping the Politics of Public Opinion: Federalists and the Jay Treaty Debate. In: Journal of the Early Republic. 20 (3), 2000, pp. 393-422. (in JSTOR)
  • Todd Estes: The Jay Treaty Debate, Public Opinion, And the Evolution of Early American Political Culture. 2006.
  • James M. Farrell: Fisher Ames and Political Judgment: Reason, Passion, and Vehement Style in the Jay Treaty Speech. In: Quarterly Journal of Speech. 76 (4), 1990, pp. 415-434.
  • Joseph M. Fewster: The Jay Treaty and British Ship Seizures: the Martinique Cases. In: William and Mary Quarterly. 45 (3), 1988, pp. 426-452. (in JSTOR)
  • Bradford Perkins: The First Rapprochement: England and the United States, 1795-1805. 1955.
  • Bradford Perkins: Lord Hawkesbury and the Jay-Grenville Negotiations. In: The Mississippi Valley Historical Review. Vol. 40, No. 2, Sep 1953, pp. 291-304. (in JSTOR)
  • Jack N. Rakove: Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution. Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1997, ISBN 0-394-57858-9 .
  • Paul A. Varg: Foreign Policies of the Founding Fathers. 1963.