Europe and the American Revolution 189
vote recognition of the United States, after which half a dozen Amsterdam bank-
ers produced a loan of five millions.
Meanwhile Adams and his Dutch allies carried on a literary propaganda. Van
der Kemp published a collection of American public documents, which included
the Massachusetts constitution of 1780, doubtless furnished by Adams. Adams’
own History of the Dispute with America, which he had written in 1774, also ap-
peared in Dutch. Adriaan Loosjes wrote a poem on American independence, in
which Adams figured as one of the heroes. And, like Franklin in Paris, Adams re-
ceived the suggestions of well- wishers who thought that the simple Americans
would appreciate the advice of enlightened Europe on how to govern the United
States. An Americansche Bybel, containing recommendations on the management
of republics, was dedicated to him in 1781.^13
Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams, along with men like Lafayette and Kosciusko,
were only the most eminent among thousands who served, in their own persons, as
channels of communication between America and Europe. There was the circle that
gathered about the Earl of Shelburne at Bowood, and which included Bentham,
Priestley, Price, and the French abbé Morellet. There was the French literary group
that lionized St. John de Crevecoeur; it included Mme. d’Houdetot and Lacretelle,
and they persuaded him to turn the French translation of his famous American
Farmer into a long sentimental idyl suited to the prevailing taste in France. There
were others on the outer rim of historical visibility, such as a Dutch merchant in
America named Erkalens, who as early as 1776 brought about a correspondence
between Capellen van de Poll and Governors Trumbull of Connecticut and Liv-
ingston of New Jersey, so that when Adams arrived in 1780 he found Dutch-
American relations already well established. There was another Erkelens who won a
gold crown at Leiden in 1790 for a poem on Washington. One guesses at a connec-
tion with the merchant, despite a slight difference in spelling of the names.
We can even see dimly the beginnings of a group of international subversives, or
at least of the belief in their existence. British officials suspected in 1784 that the
Irish were “wrought upon by French or American emissaries.” Dutch officials in
1787 were sure that certain obscure Frenchmen, who were supposed to have
brought on the revolution in America, had now moved to Amsterdam to sow disaf-
fection there. There was of course no centrally directed subversive organization of
the kind with which later generations were to become familiar. There is no reason
to doubt, however, that the French government might discreetly sponsor revolu-
tion in other countries, as it had done in America; or that American citizens, such
as merchants, sailors, students, or other transients, if only by bragging about Amer-
ican liberty, might have an unsettling effect in Dublin, Amsterdam, or a hundred
other cities of Europe.^14
13 Full titles and data for works on America mentioned here and elsewhere may usually be found
in J. Sabin, A Dictionary of Books Relating to America, 29 volumes. (N.Y., 1868–1936); or John Carter
Brown Library, Bibliotheca americana, Part III, vol. 2 (Providence, 1871).
14 Correspondence between William Pitt and the Duke of Rutland (London, 1890), 24;
G. W. Vreede, Mr. Laurens Pieter van de Spiegel en zijne tijdgenooten 1737–1800 (Middelburg, 1876),
III, 191; A. Cobban, Ambassadors and Secret Agents: the Diplomacy of the First Earl of Malmesbury at the
Hague (London, 1954), 105.