The American Revolution was the product of political evolution coupled with significant economic growth: the economy of English America was based on agricultural production in the five Southern colonies and the commercial dynamism of the eight Northern colonies, which provided a third of the ships for the British merchant navy. Although constrained to trade exclusively with England, the American colonies engaged in significant smuggling with the French West Indies and Spanish America. Demographic growth was substantial, linked to European emigration and the slave system (two million inhabitants around 1770, of which a quarter were black slaves).
The break with the British Crown can be explained by the colonists’ growing demand for land and the increase in taxation since the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), which was very costly for England. On July 4, 1776, representatives of the American Congress voted for the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America; the deputies of the thirteen colonies thus created a new political regime.
The First Franco-American Alliance Treaty
Congress formed a volunteer army (15,000 men under the command of George Washington) but anticipated that it would not hold out long against the excellent British professional army. On February 6, 1778, Louis XVI and Vergennes (Minister of Foreign Affairs) signed a treaty of alliance with Benjamin Franklin, appointed ambassador to France, on behalf of the “United Provinces of America.” Benjamin Franklin convinced Vergennes to increase support in armaments and mercenaries, and then in 1780, to provide genuine financial, maritime, and terrestrial support to the American army, which would allow for the definitive victory of the Franco-American alliance. This is where Lafayette intervened, as a major general in the American insurgent army and a close collaborator of their commander George Washington.
In the spring of 1779, Lafayette came to France to plead the cause of the insurrection: Louis XVI sent a corps of 6,000 men across the Atlantic under the command of General Rochambeau. In March 1780, Lafayette preceded the expeditionary corps and embarked at Rochefort on the frigate L’Hermione. Commanding the troops of Virginia, he harassed Lord Cornwallis’s English army, soon blocked in the Chesapeake Bay by the French fleet and the troops of Washington and Rochambeau. The Franco-American allies won the decisive victory at Yorktown on October 17, 1781.
The Outcome of the American War
In September 1783, the Treaty of Versailles was signed between France and England. French public opinion was enthusiastic about this conflict, which symbolized the struggle for freedom and independence, in line with the spirit of the Enlightenment. But it was primarily an opportunity for revenge against England, which had been victorious at the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763. The United States was recognized as sovereign; it was the first time a colonial power admitted the loss of one of its colonies for the exclusive benefit of the colonists. France did not regain Canada or Louisiana but did recover Newfoundland, Senegal, and the port of Dunkirk, which had been English since the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Spain, France’s ally during the conflict, regained Florida from the English.
Unfortunately, the price of victory was particularly high: with more than a billion livres of expenses related to the American conflict between 1778 and 1783, the debt increased considerably for the French monarchy and foreshadowed the economic difficulties that would precede the Revolution.
