ABSTRACT
The Declaration of Independence hardly proclaimed the birth of a new-minted nation. It claimed, to be precise, 'That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States'. 'National' cultures are complex phenomena, partly the product of deliberate engineering, and always so in communities with several different traditions, one of which is trying to gain the upper hand and write the others out of the country's past as well as its future. Lord Shelburne ensured that he was not contradicted by sharing his programme with very few others than trusted agents. Shelburne was by 1782 a convinced free trader who hoped to create a new political world by a series of commercial treaties with the United States, Ireland, and France, but at the beginning he seriously hoped 'to preserve a union with America, on a basis of equal partnership at the imperial level'.
