Chained to History: Slavery and US Foreign Relations to 1865

Winner of the 2022 Phillis Wheatley Book Award, Historical-Academic Nonfiction In Chained to History, Steven J. Brady centers slavery in America's pre–Civil War foreign relations. From the aftermath of the American Revolution, Brady examines how slavery influenced military, economic, and moral diplomatic challenges. He demonstrates how slavery intertwined with America's foreign policy, affecting trade, extradition treaties, and military alliances. Brady highlights the constraints on American policymakers, who, despite an international shift toward abolition, were limited by the proslavery interests of the Democratic Party. As global powers abolished slavery, the American stance became increasingly untenable. From the Age of Revolutions through the Civil War, slavery consistently shaped US relations with the Atlantic World and beyond. Chained to History explores this crucial issue comprehensively, revealing how the practice of human bondage influenced America's reentry into the global community after 1865.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Speaking of Slavery 1. "Things Odious or Immoral": Britain, Spanish Florida, and Slaves Unfettered 2. "'Tis Ill to Fear": American Responses to the Haitian Revolution 3. "Separate from Foreign Alliances": Limiting Connections and Commitments 4. "Fully Meets Its Responsibility": The Limits of American Unilateralism 5. "Only Cowards Fear and Oppose It": Texas and Cuba 6. "Its Peculiar Moral Force": Lincoln, Emancipation, and Colonization Epilogue: American Foreign Relations Unchained

About the Author :
Steven J. Brady is Associate Professor in the Department of History at The George Washington University. He is author of Eisenhower and Adenauer.

Review :
This international history illustrates the multidirectional thrusts of slavery in US diplomacy. (Choice) Chained to Slavery traces the influence of slavery on American foreign policy through a series of critical events in US history. With clear use of evidence and strong organization, Stephen J. Brady compellingly demonstrates that slavery and international relations were inextricably connected throughout the first century of US history. (The Journal of Southern History) With Chained to History, Stephen Brady makes a signal contribution to nineteenth-century history: producing a comprehensive, well-written, and authoritative one-volume account of the impact of Black slavery on early US statecraft. (Civil War Book Review) Steven J. Brady offers a new synthesis across the antebellum era to "re-center" the importance of slavery by analyzing how the "peculiar institution" complicated commercial transactions. Slavery required American administrations to deal more with foreign nations than they would have ideally liked. (Journal of American History) Written with objectivity and precision, Chained to History makes an important contribution by depicting how the distinct worldview of enslavers twisted US foreign policy in troubling ways. (The Foreign Service Journal) Steven Brady's Chained to History demonstrates how any understanding of the relationship between the United States and the world from 1783 to 1865 has to place slavery at its centre as a domestic consideration, protecting slavery at home influenced foreign policy abroad; slavery was also a transnational institution. (Slavery and Abolition)