Paper 22: The Worlds of the American Founding, 1781-1790

2. Isolated Among Strangers

Introduction: The capture of the Betsey
1. Strategies of nation building
A) Persuasion and a treaty-worthy government
B) Coercion and expansion
2. Facing outward: The United States in the Atlantic world
A) The British Caribbean
B) A liberal concession?
C) The French alternative
3. Facing inward: The United States and the American interior
A) The Mississippi and the key to the West
B) Imperial rivalries
C) Native resistance
Conclusion: John Jays warning
Further reading
Kevin T. Barksdale, The Lost State of Franklin: Americas First Secession (Lexington: University Press of
Kentucky, 2009)
Thomas Bender, A Nation Among Nations: Americas Place in World History (New York: Hill and Wang,
2006)
Gregory Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993)
Kathleen DuVal, Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution (New York: Random
House, 2014)
Eliga Gould, Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World
Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 2012)
Patrick Griffin, American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier (New York: Hill and
Wang, 2007)
Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground; Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American
Revolution (New York: Knopf, 2006)