For the 2015 Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) conference, I organized a panel on “Patterns and Problems: The US Consular Service in the Nineteenth Century.” Joining me in presenting papers were Prof. Lawrence Peskin of the Morgan State University, who spoke about his research on the Montgomery family, a trading family who provided the US consul in Alicante, Spain from 1793 to 1823; and Prof. Mattew Raffety of the University of Redlands, who spoke about Nicholas Trist’s time as a – very loquacious – US consul in Havana between 1831 and 1845. Our chair was Prof. Nancy Shoemaker of the University of Connecticut, and our commentator was Prof. Kristin Hoganson of the University of Illinois.
Here’s my paper on “Charting the US Consular Service in the Long Nineteenth Century”: