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Francis D. Cogliano : Emperor of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson's Foreign Policy . (New Haven : Yale University Press , 2014. Pp. xiii, 302.)
Book Reviews
In this lucid study, Francis Cogliano provides a comprehensive review of Thomas Jefferson's lengthy career on the global stage. While many of Jefferson's initiatives, such as the Louisiana Purchase, have been exhaustively mined by scholars since Henry Adams, the grace and power of Cogliano's study is its breadth and application of cohesive mortar between what are often seen as disparate and desultory Jeffersonian gambits. Most importantly, Cogliano's work is faithful to the historical record in understanding Jefferson's statecraft on its own terms, rather than as a "prequel" to future American international conduct.
International relations has long stood as a conspicuous square peg in the round hole of Jefferson scholarship, and, despite Jefferson's centrality to early American foreign policy, comprehensive studies of his diplomacy are surprisingly few. There are many explanations for this lacuna in the literature, such as the current preference for social historical and ideological questions in early American scholarship as well as the complexity and breadth of Jefferson's forty-year political career which challenge easy synthesis. Perhaps chiefly, sorting through Jefferson's apparent inconsistencies on international questions is a task that few scholars relish: the author of the Declaration of Independence became largely dismissive of republican revolutions in New Spain, Haiti, and even France; the advocate of strict limits on executive power sent a naval squadron to the Mediterranean and purchased Louisiana on his own authority; and the fervent champion of freedom of expression fumed at any criticism of his Embargo policy. Fortunately, Cogliano, who in his earlier work Thomas Jefferson: Reputation and Legacy (Edinburgh University Press, 2006) wrestled with many of these Jeffersonian political contortions, comes to the task ideally prepared...