"Todos somos Americanos" : Joel Poinsett’s mission as the first diplomatic envoy of the United States in Mexico, 1825-1829

Abstract

This doctoral thesis examines the first diplomatic mission of the United States in Mexico, led from 1825 to 1829 by Joel Poinsett—the diplomat after whom the poinsettia was named. Poinsett's mission to negotiate treaties of commerce and boundaries ended in less than favourable circumstances: After four and a half years of frustrated efforts to obtain ratifications in Mexico, he was recalled upon the request of the Mexican government.

The historiography has usually laid responsibility for the failure of Poinsett’s negotiations on his alleged advocacy of US expansionism and interference in domestic politics. In contrast, the findings in this dissertation (based on material from archives in Mexico, the United States, and Britain) show that the root cause for the failure of those first North American negotiations was the clash of two incompatible continental notions: The one advocated by the John Quincy Adams’ administration, where all the Americas would be bound by non-discriminatory principles of commerce (such as ‘the most-favoured-nation’), in contrast to the Mexican administration’s vision (under President Guadalupe Victoria) of a Spanish American tariff bloc that would deliberately exclude the United States.

Throwing light upon understudied aspects of early US-Mexico relations—at a time when US hegemony did not yet exist and Mexico entertained highly ambitious plans—this dissertation also calls for a revaluation of Poinsett’s role, revealing a figure who looked after his country’s interests and yet was not an agent of hegemony: a diplomat whose negotiations failed to overcome the discrepancies between Mexico’s cabinet and congress, and whose reputation suffered from collateral damage in a volatile political environment.