An Enemy Abroad: The Transnational Politics of Francis Jeffrey in the War of 1812

In 1813 the celebrated founding editor of the Edinburgh Review, Francis Jeffrey, travelled to New York and Washington while Britain was at war with the United States and there is a surviving journal of that journey. The trip was for a romantic purpose (Jeffrey was to marry and bring back to Britain his second wife) but the timing meant that he was an enemy abroad while on US soil. As such, the journal unsettles our expectations about national identifications and this article examines Jeffrey’s interactions in the White House, his reactions to encounters with African Americans and his Romantic responses to the American landscape in order to investigate his transnational politics.