A Connecticut wit in queen Maria’s court: David Humphreys on the happiness, future glory and industry of America

For Helen Milner, "international political economy is a growth industry" (1998) and, according to the "growth stability theory", a stable and open world economy requires the dominance of one country, or leading power, to coordinate and discipline other countries and ensure the conditions conducive to economic growth. By most accounts, throughout the 19th century that hegemon was still Great Britain. Yet, as early as the 18th century, the United States were debating how to secure commerce and navigation in the Mediterranean Sea and prevent the Barbary pirates from entering the Atlantic, weighing whether, in Jefferson’s words, to obtain peace at any cost: "to obtain peace by purchasing it [or] to vindicate their commerce by arms" (1790). This paper aims to explore the ways in which David Humphreys, as both poet and politician, helped shape 19th-century American alterity into hegemony and how he did so from Lisbon, as First Minister from the United States of America to Portugal and Commissioner Plenipotentiary charged by George Washington with negotiating and concluding Treaties of Amity and Commerce with Tripoli and Algiers.