The Foreign Service Journal, March 2022

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2022 23 entries for “embassies” take the lead in the map key. [These two maps can be seen on the March FSJ featured content page: afsa.org/bring-back-legations. ] Writes the Office of the Historian: “The United States only sent and received Min- isters prior to 1893. Until 1893, the United States was not considered a major power, therefore the highest-ranking diplomatic representatives that it sent or received were Ministers of one sort or another.” An 1893 news clipping datelined Paris and titled “France Returns the Compli- ment” recounts how the French parlia- ment was pleased to reciprocate the U.S. elevation of its legation in Paris with a similar designation of its Washington, D.C., legation as an embassy. If an embassy was originally a sort of exceptional “TDY” or “temporary duty assignment,” to use current State Depart- ment jargon, a legation was a permanent diplomatic mission, a brick-and-mortar representation of a country in a foreign capital. The State Department’s Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations main- tains the Secretary of State’s “Register of Culturally Significant Property,” and it includes two American legation buildings that remain U.S. government property to this day. The Old American Legation in Seoul, South Korea, serves as a guest house on the grounds of the American ambassador’s residence. The Tangier American Legation is another matter, serving as amuseum, cul- tural and conference center, and research library. As the first American diplomatic property, gifted to the United States by the sultan of Morocco in 1821, it is the only U.S. National Historic Landmark in a foreign country. And online, it has amonopoly on the “legation” URL: www.legation.org . But if readers in the U.S. want to see a legation without leaving the country, they can visit the French Legation Museum in Austin, once home to the French mission to the short-lived Republic of Texas (built in 1841). In Washington, D.C., several venerable buildings on Embassy Row (for example, the Embassy of Luxembourg) were once legations when their countries hosted American legations. An Idea Whose Time Has Come, Again? The embassy-legation equation was an indication of the relative ranking of sending and receiving countries (and of reciprocity, i.e., minister for minister, ambassador for ambassador). But while they existed, legations also afforded flex- ibility to American presidents and Secre- taries of State in terms of assignments for senior diplomats. Though ministers were appointed with the consent of the United States Senate, sometimes assignments slipped through. John Carter Vincent, a senior China expert under a cloud because of the Cold War anti-communist hysteria and there- fore unlikely to receive Senate confirma- tion, could be assigned as the “diplomatic agent with rank of minister” at the U.S. Legation in Tangier, the longtime dip- lomatic capital of Morocco. At the time of his appointment in 1951, The New York Times wrote: “For his new post in Tangier, Mr. Vincent will not require Sen- ate approval.” This might also have been possible because of the assignment’s somewhat unique status (Tangier was still the consortium-ruled International Zone, but Vincent was also accredited to the French Protectorate). The tool kit available to American administrations in the past was much more varied than the current “ambas- sador or bust” approach. At various points, for example, the Tangier Ameri- can Legation changed status over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. Depending on the vagaries of colonial rule or whether the U.S. and a protec- torate power were allies (in the case of the U.S. joining with France in World War I), nomenclature for the American representation in Tangier went from consulate to consulate general to lega- tion to diplomatic agency, and, finally, The American legation’s iconic “Arab Pavilion” building in Tangier, Morocco, from the 1930s. Inset: A stan- dard legation seal, or “vignette.” TANGIERAMERICANLEGATION INSTITUTEFORMOROCCANSTUDIES