Communications and Empire: George Washington’s Farewell Address MICHAEL S. KOCHIN ABSTRACT I examine a crucial moment in American state building and the structuring of the Amer- ican public sphere: George Washington’s Farewell Address. George Washington helped shape the politically most salient information technology of his day: the publicly pro- vided circulation of newspapers through the mail. Washington then used this technology in his Farewell Address in order to make his “Friends and Fellow Citizens” into Americans. Washington educated those he named as Americans on their duty to hold their leaders in- telligently accountable for those leaders’ foreign policy decisions. Washington used rhet- oric, communications technology, and administrative innovation to make a public, a re- public, and an empire. George Washington, elected head of the American representative republic, had to form a public to which he and future presidents would be accountable. Washington had to form a public that would engage in foreign and security policy. “American citizens,” writes the contemporary political scientist Ira Katznelson, “were bound by the decisions of representative institutions; but unlike the subjects of absolutist regimes, they had to be mobilized ideologically by political leaders . . . for war and military projects, or these would not be re- Michael S. Kochin is associate professor in the School of Government, Political Science, and International Relations, Tel Aviv University (kochin@tauex.tau.ac.il). An earlier version of this article was delivered at a panel on “American Foreign Policy and American Political Thought” sponsored by the American Political Thought Related Group at the 2014 Annual Meet- ing of the American Political Science Association. It is an open letter of gratitude sent general delivery to Richard John, sometime history tutor in Mather House. It was drafted while I was a Visiting Fellow in the Henry Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom at Claremont McKenna College. Thanks to Mark Blitz and Elvia Huerta for administrative support; Charles Kesler, Paul Carrese, and Levis Kochin for helpful conversations; Anna Kochin for reading drafts; and my APSA discussant Scott Segrest for his suggestions. American Political Thought: A Journal of Ideas, Institutions, and Culture, vol. 8 (Summer 2019). 2161-1580/2019/0803-0002$10.00. © 2019 by The Jack Miller Center. All rights reserved.