British Containment Foiled Again: John Quincy Adams’ American System

In the sixth annual Ginsburg-Satell Lecture on American Character and Identity, FPRI's Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Walter McDougall will continue to develop the obscure but paramount theme of Containment in Anglo-American diplomacy during the 18th and 19th centuries. The British failed to check the growth of the United States during the War of 1812, but they tried again following the successful Latin American revolts against Spain. Foreign Secretary George Canning's beguiling offer of an Anglo-American "partnership" in the New World duped all the members of James Monroe's cabinet ... except John Quincy Adams who would author the famous Monroe Doctrine in 1823.

The Annual Ginsburg-Satell Lecture on American Character and Identity is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Stanley and Arlene Ginsburg Family Foundation and the Satell Family Foundation.

About the Speaker:

Walter A. McDougall is the Ginsburg-Satell Chair of FPRI's Center for the Study of America and the West. He is also the Co-Chair of FPRI’s Madeleine and W.W. Keen Butcher History Institute, Chairman of FPRI Board of Advisors, and sits on the Board of Editors for FPRI’s journal, Orbis. He is the Alloy-Ansin Professor of International Relations and Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania.