In 1877 former president Ulysses S. Grant, along with his family and friends, embarked on a two-year world tour that took him from Liverpool to Yokohama with stops throughout Europe and Asia. Biographies of Grant deal very briefly, if at all, with this tour and generally treat it as a pleasure trip filled with sightseeing, shopping, wining, and dining. Far from an extended vacation, however, Grant’s travels in fact constituted a diplomatic mission sanctioned by the U.S. government. In this revealing volume, Edwina S. Campbell chronicles Grant’s journey—the first diplomatic mission ever undertaken by a former U.S. president—and demonstrates how it marked a decided turning point in the role of the United States in world affairs.
 
Traveling commercially and on U.S. Navy warships, Grant visited ports of call throughout the British Empire, Europe, and Asia, including Britain, France, Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Scandinavia, Russia, Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, Ireland, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, and Japan. Along the way, he met with monarchs, ministers, and average citizens, creating the model for the summitry and public diplomacy practiced by future American presidents and articulating concepts of national self-determination, international organization, and the peaceful settlement of international disputes decades before Elihu Root’s advocacy of binding international arbitration and Woodrow Wilson’s proposal for the League of Nations.
 
Campbell reveals Grant to be a skillful envoy who brought to his travels the deep interest in foreign policy issues he had shown during his administration. Grant confirmed the United States’ commitment to Anglo-American cooperation, demonstrated America’s interest in the territorial integrity of China, affirmed American faith in universal (male) suffrage as the basis for governmental legitimacy, and asserted the importance of an international order based on equality and justice for all states and their citizens. Grant’s efforts shaped not only John Hay’s Open Door policy in 1899–1900 but also the broader American approach to twentieth-century international relations. Throughout the trip, Julia Grant proved essential to the success of her husband’s mission, and Campbell tells how the couple impressed people around the world with an enduring image of an American president and first lady.
 
By illuminating the significance of Grant’s often overlooked postpresidential travels, Citizen of a Wider Commonwealth establishes the eighteenth president as a key diplomat whose work strongly influenced the direction of future U.S. foreign policy and contributes substantially to the study of American international relations. 

“This is one of the most fascinating Civil War books of the last few years, a fitting tribute to a man who ‘practiced diplomacy as he had once waged war, without hubris or fear, but with unwavering confidence in himself and in his fellow citizen’s ability to meet whatever challenges came their way.’”—Allen Barra, America’s Civil War Magazine

“By contrast with most Grant biographers, who treat [Grant’s postpresidential] tour as a pleasure trip if they discuss it at all, author Edwina Campbell chronicles Grant’s travels with the understanding that he was on a U.S. government-sanctioned diplomatic mission—in fact, the first diplomatic mission ever undertaken by a former U.S. president.”—The Foreign Service Journal
 
“[Campbell] does a wonderful job of detailing how Grant dealt with the portentous decorum of the British Empire, which worked to downplay his mission by providing him with all of the ceremony of an ex-sovereign but denying him that same dignity as he ventured into areas of the empire east of the Suez.”—Dustin McLochlin, Presidential Studies Quarterly
 
“Campbell has written a fascinating book that explores not only a particular moment in nineteenth-century U.S. foreign relations, but the origins of many diplomatic techniques that would become central to American foreign policy in the twentieth century.”—Tizoc Chavez, Passport: The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Review

“In her lucid and fast-paced book[,] Campbell makes clear that as his country’s ‘ambassador at large[,]’ Grant pioneered the practice of public diplomacy. . . . This volume both adds to the growing revisionist scholarship on Grant and confirms that those who dismiss the contributions and legacy of the eighteenth president do so at their own peril.”—John David Smith, author of Lincoln and the U.S. Colored Troops

“Grant’s [postpresidential] trip had elements of a vacation, but Campbell convincingly shows it was also a strategic assessment undertaken by one of a handful of Americans who had the necessary experience and perspective. This is an important book, not only for scholars of Grant but also for students of U.S. foreign policy, the latter part of the nineteenth century, and the evolution of the role of presidents in and out of office.”—Kenneth B. Moss, professor emeritus, National Security Studies, National Defense University
 
“Citizen of a Wider Commonwealth is the untold story of Grant’s postpresidential ‘world tour,’ a diplomatic mission that sought to position the United States for the power and influence it would wield in the twentieth century. Must reading for anyone interested in the forces shaping American foreign policy as the continental power took its place on the world stage.”—Charlotte Ku, Texas A&M University School of Law

“Citizen of Wider Commonwealth--Ulysses S. Grant's Postpresidential Diplomacy offers a wealth of material to inform scholars of a moment in American history that has long been ignored. Ms. Campbell's book awakens interest in Grant as an international diplomat who was reticent of speech but vocal in his actions and his perceptions that echo today. Her book bears significant literary history and historic value as it presents details of that effort previously not brought to light.”—James Middleton