> The stunning success at Saratoga gave Franklin what he had been pleading for — explicit French support in the war.
Or, in contrast to a story of straightforward military system-y tipping point, perhaps ...
> The Battle of Saratoga was [...] not pivotal in convincing France that the rebels could defeat Britain. [...] French support depended far more upon court intrigue [1]
> “sometimes history happens by accident,” and what more can one say about a revolution whose fate hung upon whether a French chevalier (Beaumont) suspected of being a woman turned over documents incriminating the French king of violating a treaty with Britain? Or that the social climber (Beaumarchais) who negotiated both the return of the evidence and support for the American cause would be best remembered for penning The Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville? Or that the fate of American independence would take place in an environment more riddled with spies than a John le Carré novel? [1]
Like ChatGPT, sometimes the stories of history are "we started out saying X, and now are unable to change course...".
As someone who studied American history, this point of view always irks me a little bit. The reality of it is that all of the assumptions that America would have lost without French support is trying to prove a counterfactual. There are a lot of reasons to think that it would not have been so. Every southern campaign that the British had tried to pull off was a disaster. The cost to the British crown of maintaining and continuing the war was ruinous. there were many near disasters that the British just barely avoided. Washington’s position at Monmouth was set up to be decisive and Lee’s disasterous commands there played a huge role in continuing the war. Cowpens and Kings Mountain denied the British their different strategic goals. Knox managed to trap the British under the threat of guns at Boston and it was considered a miracle at the time that the British were able to evacuate to Canada. Their luck ran out at Yorktown.
Furthermore, Washington understood what most of his contemporaries did not. Simply by having an army in the Field, he denied legitimacy to the British. Washington and his generals laid out strategies that would one by one eliminate British armies in the field. To borrow a concept from the navy theoreticians Washington had an army in being. The British could not achieve their goals without the utter destruction of Washington’s army and could not maintain the armies for long periods of time. The British had to win - all Washington had to do is not loose.
At the same time, political will to continue the war would eventually run out for the British. They only had one way to win, and very many ways to loose. The fact that it was Yorktown and not Monmouth has to do with the differences between Lafayette and Charles Lee.
But let’s ignore all of that - I think at some point the colonies would have gone down the same path that the French eventually went down - a levee en masse. I suspect running into a large well armed colonial mass conscription army would have ended things very quickly.
Anyways - the French are important to the story - but it’s like claiming that American won World War I.
It's a maxim that guerrilla wars succeed with a lot of external help and supply, if they succeed at all, throughout history. That's fact. The French were financial supporters from before the shooting began; and supplied high tech gunpowder that meant that from the start the colonists' muskets had significantly more range, no small thing. Without France, nothing. The French ended up bankrupting the state due to extreme overspending on the Americans' war, and sliding into revolution themselves. (Although weather wrecking crops after the eruption of an Icelandic volcano was a large factor as well.) The Americans deserve great credit, but they owe tremendous debts of gratitude, too.
Washington had to keep British costs high while not losing, he couldn't just sit.
Mass conscription is difficult if you can't pay or properly feed or clothe the army you have and a big portion of your own population opposed to you.
The American Revolution was not a Guerilla war. It was primarily fought with pitched battles between opposing armies. This was the case from the first shots (at Lexington, and subsequently Concord and Bunker Hill) to the last at Yorktown.
It did not begin as a guerrilla war, true; but the abject failure of that initial effort made it clear to Washington that the war had to continue as an irregular war without set front lines or attempts to directly take back New York or Boston. Guerrilla wars can have large battles, but do not have established, continuing and continuous front lines. Mao's troops now and then held large battles with the Japanese (and KMT), once by choice - but his armies nearly always fought as guerillas and were far more successful in that role.
Perhaps the American revolution isn't as obvious a case because the Brits tended to turtle a lot; not trying to demonstrate that they were in control of nearly the whole place and so providing a plethora of targets (unlike the Japanese, say.)
I think the notion of "established, continuing, and continuous front line" is anachronistic to the Revolutionary War in any case. As late as the American Civil War, an army could freely roam through the enemy countryside with relative impunity until a defending army caught up with them, as happened at Antietam and Gettysburg; there was no "front line" to punch through.
> It's a maxim that guerrilla wars succeed with a lot of external help and supply, if they succeed at all,
Not true. Show me where in "On Guerrilla Warfare" Zedong - an expert on the American and French Revolutions - claims that guerrilla warfare requires external support.
Guerrilla warfare requires the support of the population (pretty much all US IW joint doctrine highlights this).
Economic power facilitates guerrilla warfare, along with the transition to traditional warfare, but it isn't a requirement.
> Washington had to keep British costs high while not losing, he couldn't just sit.
Mao received oodles of support from the USSR, the Long March was the Reds fleeing northward to where they could still get that support, and then being able to punch further East.
The KMT was also a revolutionary force (against foreign domination), and initially preferred by Moscow for practical reasons - the USSR would at that time only support a joint command.
Mao became leader of the Reds because the Chinese Red's intelligence officer who was their contact with the USSR and held the codes for that defected to Mao from the previous leader (who wasn't going to admit to defeat by the KMT.) After that, the money etc could only to go to Mao, since he was the only point of contact the USSR then had with the Reds.
Post WWII Soviet support, esp military material support became very large indeed, allowing the Reds to crush the KMT.
But it wasn't helpful for either side to reveal the connections; better to portray the revolution as a mass movement of the peasants and workers than show all the gears and wheels.
Mao spent plenty of time and effort downplaying everything the USSR had done for him and in massive spats with the USSR, for his own political reasons. Just as Lenin didn't credit the massive support the Germans had given him, to undermine the Czar.
If I may, I feel a bit irked that we often see these outcomes as binary. Wouldn’t the absence of French involvement be likely to have caused a considerable change in social, political, and economic landscape, regardless of who ultimately “won”?
I’ve been thinking about how different paces to the Ukraine war’s culmination (eg. we increase support by 10x tomorrow) could have significant impacts on future attitudes and behaviours of all actors, especially Russia.
I am not a professional student of history and I really don’t know this war all that well, but as an audience of the future, isn’t “what were the conditions of victory?” no less important than “who won?”
I’m not sure lack of French support would have made a difference with how we understand America today assuming the Americans had still won, but had the British won, frankly, I think the US would have been better off in many respects.
>>> but had the British won, frankly, I think the US would have been better off in many respects.
Hard disagree here, I am from a former british colony, where the laws etc are still inspired by the british. The American constitution and political and legal system with its checks and balances is outright better than the british system. Of course its not perfect, but its still miles better. So its good that the rebels won and the british lost.
I dunno, American system seems to be in capture by minority party and also has track record of disenfranchising large part of population. Plus, juridical system underperformed in Amrica, due to very little checks or balances on cops and prosecutors. They also imprison impressive amount of population.
Globally, countries with presidential systems are much more likely to devolve into dictatorships than those with british-inspired parliamentary systems.
There's pros and cons to each system of course. The American "checks and balances" results in complete inability to act a lot of the time. See the frequent budget shutdowns, or compare and contrast the ability to legislate for issues like "maniacs are shooting up our schools".
The downside of course is that the great "freedom of action" of a british government can result in self harming or ill considered policies being rail roaded through. See something like brexit: it is doubtful that many countries with "checks and balances" would be able to muster the political will and broad agreement to do it in the first place. But a british government can just go YOLO.
I think a parliamentary system is better despite this because it puts the establishment in control. To become PM, you have to climb to the top of a party first (which requires many years of dedication). Some war hero, billionaire, or other radical can't just waltz into the position from nowhere. And then a PM is at all times beholden to the support of their party, which can be removed at any time if they turn out to be an idiot (see truss - nobody had to put up with her for 4 years).
The danger in britain is the move to more "democracy" in choosing PMs. If it were left to the establishment (ie MPs) things are more boring. But when it is "democratised" to party members that's when the crazies come in - the corbyns and trusses. This is an unfortunate decline of elite control in Britain which hopefully will be rolled back now that everyone has seen the unintended consequences.
The US would not have been anywhere near as successful financially and its population size would probably only have been a fraction of what it is today.
(incidentally, I find the timing of the Monroe Doctrine slightly suspicious, coming as it does from a slave-holding President a few years after the Vienna Convention includes an agreement [as moral imperative] to abolish the slave trade)
Not a chance. You can simply look at Canada and Australia to see how it might have played out... It's a difference in culture and attitude but we (Can & Aus) don't innovate, don't create, don't have the "American Dream" and in Canada we're getting dragged along by the US but still far worse on almost every economic metric.
Washington lost most, if not all of the major battles that he fought.
His opponent, General Howe, obviously had sympathy for the American cause, as he stayed the hand of destruction many times.
It was only when General Nathaniel Green was unleashed that victory favored us, ripping Tarlelton and Cornwallis' forces to tatters, giving us Yorktown.
Pardon? He forced the British to vacate Boston, and won decisive victories at Trenton and Yorktown. His worst defeats were delaying actions around NYC, where, in each case, he withdrew in good form.
I would attribute Howe's failures to incompetence rather than treason.
> Much higher than the conscript armies of the 20th century - possibly as high as 13%
Considering it was as high as 80% of military aged men for Germany and France, with a few other countries in the 50-70% range, why do you think 13%, even if you mean from the whole population, is higher?
The Revolutionary war reminds me a lot of modern insurgencies in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
It wasn't won on the battlefield it was won in secret backroom deals that made sure the supplies and money kept flowing in.
That would make for a very compelling TV series, with not much need for dramatisation beyond historical facts. Beaumarchais in particular is a fascinating character. And the Chevalier d’Éon of course, as an enlightenment cross-dressing James Bond.
The Brittish hammered down basically every other rebellion, without French intervention they would likely have ramped up further. They barely sent any troops to America and gave up really quickly, for example in the Second Boer War they sent 5 times as many soldiers, if they had sent that many to America which they probably would have without French intervention then America would have lost completely, no doubt.
You are contrasting the Revolutionary War against a war a century later.
The ability to muster, transport, and support that many troops depends upon modern industrialization.
Maintaining war against the Americans in the late 1700s was brutally expensive for Britain--with minimal ability to recover the costs after they "won". And this isn't even considering the fact that being part of the British army and navy was horrifically terrible--deserting to the American side was almost always an improvement unless you were an officer.
If France and Spain hadn't been present in North America, Britain might have just told the colonies to sod off rather than fight a war.
They landed 32,000 men at New York, the largest British fleet ever assembled up to that point. The idea that they were playing on easy mode is a delusion.
The British also learned from their American experience. The beginnings of something akin to the American revolution were stirring in what are now Ontario and Quebec in the 1830s, culminating in armed rebellion in 1837, with the more radical calling for a republic. The British response was largely conciliatory. The local legislatures would be partially elected, the government responsible to the elected house, and given jurisdiction over issues like taxation, along with a promise that future constitutional changes would only be made with local consultation.
Of course, the USA would have been able and perhaps willing to assist a new Republic of Canada, probably with an eye to absorbing it one day. The British were not in a position to be heavyhanded. It worked though; the King still rules in Canada to this day. One of the great what ifs of history, one of the more plausible ones, I think, is what if the British government had realized they would lose, and had quickly made concessions to the Americans 50 years before?
The second boer war takes place with entirely different international domestic political and military context. The UK had a small professional force that it needed to husband not a large force of conscripts that enabled it to send troops to Africa without fear and firearms that let them be useful together with the means to supply them.
No conscription in British army of the Boer War era. I believe conscription for the British army was an innovation that came into being during the First World War.
So I don't really know the history but I thought British Army planned on mass call-ups either voluntary and then if needed by conscription long before WWI, as mass mobilization isn't something you can do overnight without prep.
I believe Lord Kitchener campaigned for this in WWI until it became clear to the government at large that sustaining an army appropriate to the struggle they had entered was going to be an order more difficult than envisaged.
Modern conscription was an innovation of the First World War, though the militia (restricted to domestic employment, AFAIK) had conscription to fill units in the 18th to early 19th Century.
France and Spanish warships were patrolling off the coast of North America and preventing the English from bringing in reinforcements. Various naval battles happened.
But ever more important was the invasion of British Isles that the French and Spanish were preparing. That literally locked down the British army and navy to Britain and made it impossible for them to supply the colonial armies.
So when the French volunteers, Prussian trainers arrived in North America on top of that, the tide of war has changed.
It wasn't just the Americans, the French also supported the indian rebels against the British. It was the French connection that made popular the tales of indian resistance in America, and how Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan (father and son, rulers of then Mysore state in colonial India) became inspirational heroes for the American revolutionaries. (Why American revolutionaries admired the rebels of Mysore - https://aeon.co/essays/why-american-revolutionaries-admired-... ). Indeed, some speculate that if the French had not weakened, the Mysore rulers might have been successful in chasing away the British from large parts of India too.
But ofcourse, as soon as America got its independence, it chose to follow the British and become an imperialist too. The defeat in America also made the British obsessed about holding on to India, and change their strategy - a few decades later, they took over the direct administration of India.
There is a line in "Don't Be Fools, America" that I had wondered at:
Екатерина, ты была не права.
"Catherine, you were wrong"
Apparently George had written Catherine for troops to send to the colonies, and at first she (or her rep) had agreed (what uppity subjects!) but then none were never sent.
So the colonists got support (of omission in this case, not commission) even from an absolutist monarch because they were underdogs, who stood a chance at blackening John Bull's eye?
I think this is a little fanciful, the song is entirely about Alaska which was sold to the US 71 years after Catherine died. The more reasonable explanation is that the line in the song is just wrong for poetic license or other reasons.
Why invent poetic reasons when we already have historical?
Because nothing in the text suggests or in any way alludes to these supposed historical reasons? That seems a much bigger leap and invention than a line in a song simply being not all that historically accurate.
Does anyone remember where the longest siege ever in history was waged?
Hint: It was in the American Revolution.
Second hint: Not Yorktown or Boston.
Answer: Correct! The siege of Gibraltar. Undertaken by France and Spain, the (largely inept) siege lasted more than 3.5 years and delayed the end of the war long past Yorktown.
I wonder if the ongoing siege of Gaza counts? Counting 15 years. Or does it not count without any active fight back OR because Gaza is a part of Israel and thus Israel has laid a siege on itself?
France was a key ally to the Americans during the Revolutionary War, and their support was instrumental in helping the young nation gain legitimacy in the eyes of other countries. The French military's intervention at the Battle of Saratoga was a turning point in the war, and without their help, the Americans may have been soundly defeated by the British.
Please consider a review of the HN comment guidelines, not sure this adds to the discussion and is basically name calling and insinuating a bot
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
That sort of thing is a superficial indication of a lack of appreciation for history and signals that a surprisingly large fraction of the people has no idea of their past. You can try to diminish that but this is something that is fairly unique to the United States, I haven't seen that sort of sentiment anywhere else.
I'm sorry, "broad support"? It was a national joke at the time, and remains one of the great national jokes of the past 20 years. It was polled at the time (God help us) and a supermajority reported the idea was "silly". No restaurant chain in the country participated; so far as I know, it was only at the House cafeteria. Come on. I call shenanigans. You can't play the "freedom fries" card. Find another one!
(The implications of "freedom fries" is a much more interesting and curious conversation than the correct words to use to generalize across disfavored cohorts of Americans.)
You can downplay it all you want, the fact is that this sort of thing happens and it can't just be shrugged off by 'oh, we were just joking' because of the context in which those things happened. Symbolism is a thing and by having your official governing bodies involved you lose the 'it's just a joke' defense.
Gallup would do well to poll in Europe as well for such 'jokes'.
Seriously: the US is a great country in many ways. But this sort of thing does enormous damage to its international reputation, much more than you might think. That joke became world news at the time and put the US in a very bad light. The person who made it happen (Walter Jones) eventually recanted and wished he had never done it (props to him), but the damage is real and lasting, and unfortunately reflects some aspect of American society that isn't all that nice. Just look at your own comment: if 66% of Americans polled see/saw it as a joke ('har har, those cowardly French, upset at a joke') that implies that 33% see it as reflecting reality. That's the thing you should be amazed at, rather than to trot it out as proof that it isn't a problem.
We've done all sorts of stuff to durably damage our international reputation (invading Iraq seems like it ought to be pretty high on the list). "Freedom Fries" isn't one of them. At any rate, I'm only here because you suggested that the stunt had "broad support". It had the opposite of that. Virtually nobody supported it. Most people couldn't even believe the GOP was serious (and, I mean, they weren't.)
The stunt had broad support at the time. Enough to get it to the point where there wasn't a news outlet in the world that did not cover it (and the absurdity of it). And it is precisely because it was in relation to the Iraq war being misguided that it has relevance: you either unquestioningly follow the US on every adventure or you risk being belittled by the most powerful nation on the planet, no matter what your historical ties are.
News outlets covering something does not indicate that it has broad support. I'm not seeing any evidence that it had broad support, and I'm seeing evidence from the aforementioned Gallup poll that it did not have broad support. Can you back your claim up in some way?
"66% percent thought it was a silly idea" does not mean that 33% saw it as "reflecting reality". The 33% thought it was a sincere reflection of the patriotism of the people saying "freedom fries". The poll in question: https://news.gallup.com/poll/8032/majority-americans-view-fr...
"The poll, conducted March 14-15, shows that 64% of Americans currently express an unfavorable view of France, while only about half that number, 34%, have a favorable view. "
That's the kind of damage such a thing does, silly idea or not.
That's a pretty different thing than there being broad support for "freedom fries", or that the freedom fries thing was a relevant factor in affecting how citizens of other countries view the US or Americans.
The US population's approval rating of our own elected government officials swings to a similar extent in basically every election cycle, so it's hard for me to imagine a world where that shift applied to a foreign country moves the needle on perception of the US.
You may not believe that such a thing has an effect on the broader sentiment of how the population of one country views another but I believe it does and Gallup's own poll seems to at least confirm some correlation, possibly not causation.
The trope of the French as 'cowardly cheese eating surrender monkeys' is well known enough to have it's own wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheese-eating_surrender_monkey...), and even though it started as a joke and never was intended to be used in any other way those sentiments have a way of leaking out of their container and infusing society.
You will not find a mirror image sentiment in France. Whatever the cause and whatever the effects it seems strange to have such sentiments towards a country that was instrumental in the birth of your own, including shipping the Statue Of Liberty at a time that France could ill afford such symbolic luxuries, and yet they felt it important enough to make that gesture.
French favorable vs unfavorable views of the US flex similarly to US views of France, and are likewise triggered by policy/political decisions in each country.
Consider me dense but that is not the sentiment that I get from the article, it lumps all of Europe together, not France in isolation and that's the subject here I thought?
The way I read the article is: Europeans on average are positive about their relationship with the United States, with the French sitting at 84% positive, the reverse is reflected in the views of the United States versus Europe as a whole at 73%. Individual sentiment of the United States versus various European countries is not broken out.
The article is about the sweeping change in European favorability of the US in the wake of Biden taking office.
The graph I linked from the article specifically breaks out France from the UK and Germany, and shows that the French population's position on the US has inverted several times in the measured period, with low points during the Trump and Bush presidencies where only around 40% of French respondents viewed the US favorably.
I'm going to stop responding here rather than keep digging the thread deeper.
Right here in this thread there are examples of precisely the sentiment that I tried to address with my comment. That's proof enough for me that those sentiments are alive and well and that is - from my perspective, at least - a pity. Given that there is again a war going on in Europe and that there are some pretty strong voices for Ukraine to surrender part - or even all - of their territory to Russia to save on the expense and because that is the inevitable outcome makes this sort of lack of historical awareness a real problem.
You can disavow it, and I do not doubt that you do have that historical awareness but unfortunately the sentiment exists, is real and likely will be more and more forceful in the coming years.
If France had had that attitude then likely the USA as we know it today would not exist, and for that the French deserve lasting recognition. It also underlines - at least for me - that we, the 'free world' are in this together and that if we don't stand united eventually we will fall. The French had plenty of reasons to question the Iraq war - some good, some not so good - but to be insulted like that was counterproductive, to put it mildly.
All sorts of sentiments are around in all sorts of threads. What you can't do is write sweeping generalizations about entire massive categories of people. It's a totally basic rule of any vaguely sane forum beside being simply common decency.
Ok, so we'll do away with the sweeping generalizations and I'll try to rephrase it in a way that it is factually correct without stepping over those boundaries, let me know if it gets a pass or not:
In France and amongst French people the prevailing sentiment is that an everlasting debt is owed to the United States and other allied forces that helped liberate France from the Germans at the conclusion of World War II. This is for instance apparent in the maintenance of war cemeteries, names of many streets and commemorative plaques and annual ceremonies. It is taught in schools from an early age and an important part of the history curriculum. No equivalent reciprocal feeling exist in the United States for the contribution that the French had to the origin story of that country. On the contrary, the French are often portrayed in negative ways when it comes to their stance with respect to engaging in military action, such as exemplified during the run-up to the Iraq war by certain elements of the United States administration and some of their followers. A number of Americans is unaware of the historical ties between France and the United States and has a negative view of France as an ally.
It wouldn't have been flagged to pieces, that's for sure!
As to factually correct, I dunno, I think you're falling for the same kind of stereotype that some Americans ascribe to the French. France's critical contribution to the American War of Independence is taught in schools. Sometimes in schools named after Lafayette, or in counties, towns, near streets or squares named after him. As is the fact that one of America's great symbols, the Statue of Liberty is a gift from France, etc, etc.
This all reminds me of a bit from David Sedaris's humor/satirical book Me Talk Pretty One Day which I'm going to paste in here so we can wrap this up on a lighter note:
I chickened out, realizing that I was afraid of France. My fear had nothing to do with the actual French people. I didn’t know any actual French people. What scared me was the idea of French people I’d gotten from movies and situation comedies. When someone makes a spectacular ass of himself, it’s always in a French restaurant, never a Japanese or Italian one. The French are the people who slap one another with gloves and wear scarves to cover their engorged hickies. My understanding was that, no matter how hard we tried, the French would never like us, and that’s confusing to an American raised to believe that the citizens of Europe should be grateful for all the wonderful things we’ve done. Things like movies that stereotype the people of France as boors and petty snobs, and little remarks such as “We saved your ass in World War II.” Every day we’re told that we live in the greatest country on earth. “And it’s always stated as an undeniable fact: Leos were born between July 23 and August 22, fitted queen-size sheets measure sixty by eighty inches, and America is the greatest country on earth. Having grown up with this in our ears, it’s startling to realize that other countries have nationalistic slogans of their own, none of which are “We’re number two!”
France attempted to pull the United States into another war against Britain less than a decade after the end of the Revolutionary War and, when the Americans weren't interested, sent privateers to interfere in Anglo-American trade, leading to a naval conflict known as the "Quasi-War" in the late 1790's.
The pop-culture reputation of the French as surrendering cowards is, I would agree, a poor representation of what happened in the Second World War. What happened in the Second World War was that the Third Republic was absolutely filled with fascist sympathizers, Anglophobes, and other willing collaborators. The problem wasn't an unwillingness to fight so much as an unwillingness to fight Germany in particular in an alliance with Britain. Unfortunately, this doesn't exactly make France look like a very good ally, either. Nor does the time France unilaterally withdrew their troops from NATO in the 1960's because they, once again, wanted the option of making a separate peace.
“a surprisingly large number” of my compatriots can’t even locate themselves on a map, let alone understand France’s contribution to the war of independence or any connection thereof to current politics. You are charging at windmills, I’m afraid.
I have no illusion at being able to make a difference on this. But it is so irritating when Congress people go on about 'freedom fries' and 'French cowardice', 'surrender monkeys' etc. And I'm not even French...
On the bright side that happened during a limited window in time in the early to mid 2000’s. It certainly hasn’t persisted and plenty of people mocked it back in the day as well.
The Americans entered the war too late. Ironically it was the USSR that did more to end WW II than the US. The US entered the war when they saw a real possibility of the Soviets defeating Germany and acquiring their technology.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/dictionaries-thesauruse...