New Blog 1: United States Embassy

United States Embassy

Morocco, in December 1777, became the first nation to recognize the United States and together they maintain the United States' longest unbroken treaty. Benjamin Franklin established the first overseas mission of the United States in Paris in 1779. On April 19, 1782, John Adams was received by the States-General, and the Dutch Republic became the third country, after Morocco and France, to recognize the United States as an independent government. Adams then became the first U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands and the house that he had purchased at Fluwelen Burgwal 18 in The Hague, became the first American embassy anywhere in the world. In the period following the American Revolution, George Washington sent a number of close advisers to the courts of European potentates in order to garner recognition of U.S. independence with mixed results, including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Francis Dana, and John Jay. Much of the first fifty years of the Department of State concerned negotiating with imperial European powers over the territorial integrity of the borders of the United States as known today.