In Among the Powers of the Earth Eliga H. Gould examines what we might call the “long” American Revolution, from the 1750s to the 1820s, with a focus on the European law of nations and its influence on developments in the western hemisphere. That may sound like an arcane project, but he demonstrates that the application of European legal and diplomatic norms affected the fundamental rights of nearly everyone living in North America. The political leaders of the United States in the Revolutionary period were preoccupied with establishing themselves as a “treaty-worthy” nation. They looked to Europe for validation of their status, and felt secure in their independence only when the Old World powers recognized their full sovereignty. Gould highlights the importance of the law of nations by analysing the plight of people outside its protection such as captured pirates, rebels, squatters, the former inhabitants of conquered and dissolved colonies like the Acadians, and other potentially stateless populations including (at various moments) both Loyalists and Patriots during and after the Revolutionary War. The customary and formal law of nations conferred rights on individuals, and those who were unable to appeal to that law often faced arbitrary dispossession, captivity or death.

The experiences of different groups varied, of course, and especially when discussing Native Americans and African Americans it is important to remember that there were some who never sought protection through the application of European legal norms. To illustrate the complexity of the process of extending the law of nations, Gould presents a series of narratives involving people at the margins, like the freelancing British subjects Alexander Arburthnot and Robert Christie Ambrister, who were summarily executed by Andrew Jackson in 1818 for aiding the Red Stick Creeks and Seminoles. One is struck by how convoluted the arguments over people like Arburthnot and Ambrister became, and how difficult the disagreements were to resolve.

Among the Powers of the Earth arrives on the crest of a wave of scholarship produced over the last twelve years examining early American history within a transnational framework. In 2000, Gould helped start the wave with The Persistence of Empire, which examined the American Revolution as a crisis within the British Empire. Among the Powers of the Earth covers some of the same ground, but the differences between the works illustrate not only how Gould's own analytical framework has matured, but also how early American history, as a field, has changed over the last decade. Among the Powers of the Earth is “continental” as well as “Atlantic.” It devotes as much space to the western hemisphere as it does to Europe.

As Gould reminds us, the British initiated an effort to clearly define the borders of the colonies in an international context in the 1750s. Those British efforts, ironically, helped trigger the Revolution. After the Revolutionary war the United States continued the effort on its own terms. Gould argues that the annexation of Florida in 1819 was a critical turning point, when the US, after decades of diplomatic and military struggle, succeeded in acquiring internationally recognized boundaries. The regime that was established in 1819 did not, however, comprehensively extend the protection of the law of nations to all the people living inside the US. On the contrary, Native Americans and African Americans were left in a dangerous legal limbo. The legal plight they had suffered in the colonial era only became worse, as the dispossession of the Indians and the perpetuation of slavery were in effect authorized by internationally recognized treaties.

Slavery, dispossession and violent conflict were only part of early American experience; Gould does not provide a comprehensive analysis of the impact of the Revolution on American life. Be that as it may, his work is thoroughly researched, closely analysed and surprising in many of its findings. I have devoted a good part of my career to studying the Acadians, and though Gould devotes only a few pages of this book to the Acadians, I cannot find fault with anything he writes about them at any level of detail. He is far too cautious to be explicitly topical, but one would have to live in an opaque bubble to miss the implications of his work. The United States continues to argue about the legal rights individuals can claim under international law. With enemy combatants detained without trial or sentence at Guantánamo Bay and in camps in Afghanistan, and with American drones patrolling the skies over Yemen and Pakistan, this particular American debate has global implications.