Abstract
Inconsistency is the salient element in Jefferson’s thought about commerce before his departure to Europe shortly after the close of the American Revolutionary War. This need not imply unclear thinking, but it does reflect the intellectual positions Jefferson experimented with in the various roles he assumed during his early public career. J. G. A. Pocock instructs the modern historian to ‘learn to read and recognize the diverse idioms of political discourse as they were available in the culture and at the time he is studying’.1 In this light Thomas Jefferson’s statements may be read as simply calling for different responses to different problems. The following historical examination of Jefferson’s early thought and the policies he advocated and pursued is an effort to explain these incongruities.
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Notes
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© 1993 Doron S. Ben-Atar
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Ben-Atar, D.S. (1993). A Source of Power. In: The Origins of Jeffersonian Commercial Policy and Diplomacy. Studies in Modern History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22630-6_2
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