Matthewson — A Proslavery Foreign Policy Full title: A Proslavery Foreign Policy: Haitian-American Relations during the Early Republic

Matthewson — A Proslavery Foreign Policy Full title: A Proslavery Foreign Policy: Haitian-American Relations during the Early Republic Author: Tim Matthewson Published: 2003, Praeger (Westport, Connecticut / London) ISBN: 0-275-98002-2 Summary Matthewson argues that US foreign policy toward Saint-Domingue/Haiti from the 1790s through the 1820s was systematically shaped by the proslavery interests of the American Founding Fathers — above all Washington and Jefferson. Rather than treating Haitian-American relations as a standard diplomatic story of interests and trade, Matthewson foregrounds race and slavery as the master variables. The result was a policy that oscillated between pragmatic engagement (Adams) and deliberate economic strangulation (Jefferson), but was always filtered through the terror of Black freedom spreading to American slave states.