The American Philosophical Society has awarded SIS Professor Sarah B. Snyder a Franklin Research Grant to help with library and archival expenses related to her current book project, Unofficial Diplomats: How Overseas Americans Have Shaped U.S. Foreign Relations (under contract with Princeton University Press). 

Unofficial Diplomats is a history of Americans abroad and how they have influenced U.S. foreign policy. The book analyzes the impact of expatriates from early American missionaries through the kidnapping of American academics in Lebanon in the 1980s. Mapping overseas American outposts and influence reveals an American network of schools, churches, clubs, and even cemeteries constructed by missionaries, teachers, businesspeople, and journalists.

Over time the role of these Americans evolved – from early American pioneers, to those who forged colonies overseas, to individuals who persisted as representatives of the United States in increasingly hostile communities. They served as unofficial diplomats, representing the United States when formal relations did not exist or functioning as informal ambassadors to foreign communities alongside official U.S. representatives. Unofficial Diplomats uncovers how private American citizens shaped the place of the United States in the world.

Snyder is a historian who specializes in the influence of nonstate actors such as human rights activists and overseas Americans on U.S. foreign relations. She is the author of From Selma to Moscow: How Human Rights Activists Transformed U.S. Foreign Policy (Columbia University Press, 2018), which explains how transnational connections and 1960s-era social movements inspired Americans to advocate for a new approach to human rights. The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations awarded it the 2019 Robert H. Ferrell Prize for distinguished scholarship in the history of American foreign relations.