The ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series has now reached fifty volumes with the publication of Early American Diplomacy in the Near and Far East by the late Ambassador Hermann F. Eilts, a leading twentieth-century diplomat and scholar.

From the inception of the republic to the Civil War, the United States eschewed political involvement—at least nominally—in the affairs of foreign states, focusing instead on furthering legitimate American commerce abroad. Early American envoys––customarily accorded the lowest feasible diplomatic ranks and invariably underfunded––had to perform their duties largely on their own, dependent on excruciatingly slow communications with Washington.

Edmund Q. Roberts, a merchant from New Hampshire, labored in this diplomatic and commercial milieu. He received a roving diplomatic assignment to ascertain the terms on which American merchantmen might be received in various Indian Ocean and Southeast Asian polities and, if possible, to negotiate commercial treaties with those states. Roberts pioneered U.S. diplomatic dialogue—as opposed to consular relationships—with a few states in the region. He succeeded in negotiating the first U.S. commercial treaties with the ruler of Muscat and Oman and with the king of Siam (Thailand) but was unable to conclude a treaty with Cochin China. His contemplated attempt to open Japan never materialized.

Roberts provided valuable procedural and protocol lessons later used by U.S. diplomatic missions to Indian Ocean states and the Far East. His diplomatic efforts, limited though they were, set the stage for future U.S. diplomacy in Southeast Asia and the Pacific region. His exploits revealed, sometimes graphically, what American diplomats in the East could expect to encounter.