Abstract
In the aftermath of the attacks in Paris on 13 November 2015, police discovered a forged Syrian passport on the body of one of the terrorists. This led to several days of speculation about the origins of the attackers and a wider debate in the West about whether it was safe to receive refugees fleeing from the Syrian civil war. One reason the refugee question has proved so vexing is because the governments receiving the migrants have struggled to identify and classify persons lacking passports and other government-issued identity documents. In the modern order of nation-states, it is extremely difficult to cross international boundaries legally in the absence of such documentation. The modern state system has its origins in the eighteenth century with the emergence of new legal and diplomatic processes arising from the Age of Revolution. Questions of allegiance and citizenship became acute during the era of the American and French revolutions. This was especially true for mariners who lived and worked on the margins between warring empires and states during the period. The evolution of the legal and diplomatic status of American sailors is the theme of this excellent study by Nathan Perl-Rosenthal. Perl-Rosenthal demonstrates how questions about the citizenship of mariners – and how seamen might prove their citizenship – forced the United States to define and assert its independence.
According to Perl-Rosenthal, before the American Revolution most of the maritime powers in the Atlantic world identified their sailors and ships by means of a ‘common sense of nationality’. A combination of dress, mannerisms, ship design, and, most importantly, language and speech made it apparent to which nation or empire mariners owed their allegiance. This was crucial during wartime since privateers and merchantmen often sought to obscure their identities. The coming of the American Revolution called the common sense of nationality into question since Britons and Americans shared so many of the essential attributes normally used to identify seamen. During the American War of Independence, nationality became associated with political allegiance as some American-born mariners rejected the revolution and retained their allegiance to Britain, while other British-born seamen supported American independence. Confusion over identity was complicated still further because some mariners changed their allegiances during the conflict. For a brief period after independence there was a fluidity of identity in the Atlantic world as sailors from Britain, France and the new American republic shifted identities as circumstances and convenience dictated. This period of self-identification was replaced by a stricter and more regimented system of identification during the wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon. During this period, American sailors demonstrated their nationality by marking their bodies with tattoos. They also looked to the federal government to provide them with documentation to prove their nationality. The government did this by issuing a variety of identity documents that confirmed the nationality of American sailors. Paradoxically, as relations between the United States and Britain deteriorated, especially at sea, at the beginning of the nineteenth century the British came to accept the authority of the United States government in identifying and attesting to the nationality of its citizens. At sea, Perl-Rosenthal shows, the United States embraced a more capacious notion of citizenship than it did on land. As free African Americans were being disenfranchised and denied citizenship in the United States, the federal government extended recognition and citizenship to African American sailors in an effort to protect them from impressment by the British. Perl-Rosenthal draws a distinction between ‘maritime citizenship’ which emerged at sea, which had radical roots and implications, and the more restrictive ‘terrestrial citizenship’ that prevailed within the borders of the United States. After the War of 1812, the radical implications of maritime citizenship dissipated. Perl-Rosenthal concludes: So this tale of how a new and modern model of citizenship came into being in the early United States is also the tragic story of a path not taken in the nation’s past. Instead of spreading and deepening, the revolutionary model of maritime citizenship began to wither after 1812. (p. 275)
Citizen Sailors advances a complex and important argument with grace and flair. Nathan Perl-Rosenthal tells the story of the evolution of citizenship at sea by recounting the experiences of hundreds of seamen from around the Atlantic world. In so doing, he shows how American sailors shaped the evolution of citizenship in the United States. In Citizen Sailors, Perl-Rosenthal has made important contribution to the historiographies of the Atlantic world and the Age of Revolution. The Atlantic/oceanic approach is especially well-suited to transnational phenomena such as the slave trade or imperial history. It has seemed less suitable for understanding the consequences of the American Revolution. While the Atlantic approach has helped to explain the coming of the revolution, it has seemed less useful for historians studying the development of the United States after independence. Perl-Rosenthal’s study, by closely examining the ways in which American mariners came to define themselves, and were defined by their government, during a period of intense conflict and competition at sea, reveals much about the evolution of American citizenship and national identity after the American Revolution. As such it makes an important contribution to our understanding of the Revolution and suggests the ways in which Atlantic historians can help us to gain new insights about the early American republic. The result is an important book which should command the attention of all those interested in the eighteenth-century Atlantic and the American Revolution.