ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It can be hard to tell how long you’ve been working on a book sometimes, but one way I’ve been able to track the years of research and writing is by looking at a drawing that has hung over the desk in my office since my daughter was young. I had just started figuring out what the book would be about when she offered to help me come up with the title and the cover. Her suggestion, The Long Time Ago World Adventures, features an illustration of a missionary standing atop a globe that resembles a chocolate-chip cookie, shouting out an invitation “Do You Wot TO Be A CiGih?” The artist is now old enough that she can’t tell what that is supposed to mean (for those readers not used to translating the handwriting of first graders, it says: “Do you want to be a Christian?”). Measuring the development of a book alongside the growth of your child is one very clear way to realize just how long a project can take. There are so very many people to thank along the way.

First I must thank the wonderful people at Cornell University Press. This book was shaped by conversations with Michael McGandy over many years, and I am so grateful for his guidance, gentle prodding, and keen questions. I am especially grateful for his continued interest in this book after he moved to South Carolina (and I hope he will forgive the use of adverbs as I try to express how very much this means to me). Mahinder Kingra and Sarah Grossman have both been wonderful to work with, and I appreciate the work that they, along with the copy editors and designers, have done to bring this book to life. I want to give special thanks to Jacqulyn Teoh for going above and beyond in her help with map formatting.

I am grateful for the generous support of the Humanities and Arts Research Program at Michigan State University and from the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. Both gave me the gift of time at key moments in the research and writing of this book without which I would not have been able to complete the work. The Warren Center Fellowship also gave me the gift of community—a particular treat coming as it did during a year when the COVID-19 pandemic kept so many of us isolated. Thank you to Catherine Brekus, David Holland, and James Kloppenberg for convening our seminar on Religion and American Public Life.

The archival research for this book took me to the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia; Houghton Library at Harvard University; the National Archives in College Park, Maryland; Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary; the Yale Divinity School Library; and the Library of Congress. Thank you to the archivists and librarians who helped me in my work. Thank you, too, to the editorial teams of the John Quincy Adams Digital Diary, the Theodore Roosevelt Papers, the Papers of Woodrow Wilson, the Foreign Relations of the United States, and Hathi Trust whose digitization projects made it possible to continue my research during the pandemic. A special thanks to Sara Georgini at the Massachusetts Historical Society for her help with John Quincy Adams.

My research sits at the intersections of diplomatic history, religious history, and nineteenth-century studies, and there are a great many readers and conversation partners across these groups who have helped to shape my thinking about this book. A huge thank you to Kristen Beales, Michael Blaakman, Melissa Borja, Cara Burnidge, Kate Carté, Heath Carter, Carol Chin, Heather Curtis, Kon Dierks, Jon Ebel, Curtis Evans, Brian Franklin, Jen Graber, Nick Guyatt, Christine Heyrman, Kristin Hoganson, Daniel Immerwahr, Julia Irwin, Ryan Irwin, Kathryn Gin Lum, Melani McAlister, Max Meuller, David Milne, Kate Moran, Chris Nichols, Dael Norwood, Eva Payne, Seth Perry, William Schultz, Jay Sexton, David Sim, Lauren Turek, Daniel Vaca, Mike Verney, Karine Walther, and Tisa Wenger. Enormous thanks to Nicole Phelps for answering all my questions about consuls and sharing sources. I am especially grateful to Amy Greenberg, Andrew Preston, and Matt Sutton, who each read a full draft of the manuscript and helped me hone my argument and narrative.

The history department at Michigan State University has been a wonderful home. I am grateful to the members of the long-nineteenth-century workshop for their helpful comments and camaraderie over the years: Michael Albani, Jen Andrella, Peter Berg, Sharon Leon, Anthony Padovano, Nikki Parker, Justin Simard, Steve Stowe, Tom Summerhill, Ramya Swayamprakash, Helen Veit, Brooks Winfree, and Laura Yares. Thank you to Sidney Lu, Michelle Moyd, Mindy Smith, and Yulian Wu for helping me with the Asian and African historiography I needed for portions of this book. Especially big thanks to Michelle for providing feedback on a chapter before she had even officially joined the department. Walter Hawthorne, Lisa Fine, and Mickey Stamm have provided wonderful support as department chairs while I worked on the book. Elyse Hansen has made sure everything ran smoothly. In another part of campus, Stephanie Nawyn has been my writing accountability buddy. I am so grateful for her friendship and for her making sure that I (mostly) stayed off Twitter and got words down on the page.

During the summer of 2016, I had the tremendous good fortune of meeting Jessica Lepler at back-to-back conferences when we were both debating between possible topics for our second books. Those conversations eventually turned into the SHEAR Second-Book Writers’ Workshop and gave me a dear friend. Thank you, Jess, for the collaborations, strategizing, and always-astute feedback. And thank you, SHEAR, for letting us set up a workshop where we could get the support and community we knew we needed (as it turns out, we were not alone). I am so grateful to the members, mentors, and panelists who took part in 2BWW over the years and helped shape my thinking about this book, especially Joseph Adelman, Tom Balcerski, Lindsay Chervinsky, Rachel Hope Cleves, Seth Cotlar, Kathleen DuVal, Paul Erickson, Cassie Good, Ronald Angelo Johnson, Cathy Kelly, Ben Park, Honor Sachs, Rachel Shelden, Tamara Thornton, Serena Zabin, and Rosemarie Zagarri.

Gale Kenny and Ben Wright might have read some of these chapters as many times as I have. I do not have the words to express how much I appreciate our writing group. For the good cheer, the feedback, the arguments, the joint archive trips, the happy hours, and for generally keeping me from looking like an idiot in public (most of the time): thank you.

My biggest thanks go to my family: to Lizzie, who drew me a cover for this book when it was just barely starting to be an idea in my head, and to Jeff, who has listened to me rant and rave about the research and the writing, and has even listened to me read portions of the book aloud. Jeff also helped to make the beautiful maps and put up with my watching over his shoulder as he worked his GIS magic. He deserves a medal, or at the very least a margarita. Mom, Dad, and Julie helped me celebrate every step along the way. Thank you all for supporting me always and for being my family. I love you.