Why Did John Jay's Treaty Fail

After the War of Independence the colonies were now free from British rule. However, that came with a price to pay. Being their own separate country, the United States, having a weak economy and many complaints and disagreements with Britain. In an attempt to resolve this problem, Washington sent John Jay, the current Supreme Court justice, to Britain to negotiate with the British. After making coming to terms with Great British, the Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation, commonly known as Jay’s Treaty was created. This treaty did nothing to help America. All this treaty did was hurt the American economy because large corporations couldn’t trade with the British West Indies, further divided the country between Federalists and Anti- Federalist, and only prolonged the
inevitable War of 1812.
Not only did Jay’s Treaty fail in preventing another war, but it also failed to address the requests that the American people wanted. While keeping in mind the United States’ weak economic and militarial position in the world in 1795, Jay’s treaty was not only an ineffective treaty, but in general a huge waste of time and money.
Not only did Jay’s Treaty, further divide the Federalist and Anti- Federalist, it also damaged the American economy greatly. Part of the treaty was that trade with the British West indies would basically be done. The Britsih West Indies was a heavy source of trade for several American corporations at this time, and John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, saw it as a way to try to fix the relationship with Britain, when it didn’t need fixing at all. British was still going to treat America the same way. Not only did Jay’s Treaty restrict the British West Indies, but it allowed British Ships to
seize the neutral United State Ships trying to trade with other European countries. So not only did Americans lose their ships but they also lost all of the merchandise they would have had on the ship. Jay’s treaty was not only an economic disaster, but also failed to address several problems that also needed to be attended to. First of all John Jay never should have tried negotiated with the British in the first place. Mostly because the United States had not to bargain with and therefore negotiated from a position of weakness, but also because at the end of the day to British, America was just a pain in their behind. Jay made little headway in attempts to even get compensation for slaves taken by the British during the War of Independence and failed to even secure British recognition of the neutral rights of American ships (Jay). “Neither did he succeed in persuading the British to remove their naval vessels from the Great Lakes or desist from aiding the Indians during times of war” (Jay). Not did Jay’s Treaty seriously damage the American Economy, but it failed to even address the true problems people in America wanted to be fixed.

Works Cited
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