How could a rag-tag colonial militia with no formal training and little in the way of supplies defeat the professionally-trained British invasion force? With the help of Britain’s enemies, Spain and France. The United States had deep diplomatic ties to Europe, even if they were geographically an ocean apart. During the Revolutionary War the so-called Committee of Secret Correspondence cultivated strategic relationships abroad, and after Constitution was signed, President George Washington created an executive office to continue that work.

On this day, July 27, in 1789, Washington established the Department of Foreign Affairs, to be headed up by Thomas Jefferson as soon as he returned from his diplomatic trip to France.

For the first official top U.S. diplomat, Jefferson was notably uninterested in foreign affairs, preferring to focus most of his attentions inward to expanding into the continent. In separate treaties with Britain and France he declared U.S. neutrality in their conflicts, and this policy of Jeffersonianism would carry over into the 19th century with the Monroe Doctrine and into the first half of the 20th as the U.S. twice attempted to remain on the sidelines as the world went to war.