French and American Revolutions: Foreign Policy Aftermath

The Collapse of the Ancien Régime and Revolutionary Interpretations

The French Revolution is not just the story of a rising revolution — it is also a tale of the breakdown of the ancien régime. Bukovansky (2009, 170) notes that although the Marxist interpretation frames the French bourgeoisie as revolting against and overthrowing a monarchy rooted in feudalism, numerous historians have challenged this view over the years. The disagreements that contributed to the collapse of the ancien régime stemmed from tensions permeating old-regime political culture in the mid- to late eighteenth century (2009, 170).

Some historians see the Reign of Terror as a portentous predecessor of contemporary tyranny, while others argue that this view fails to recognize the important role the Revolution played in establishing the precedents of democratic institutions such as elections, representative government, and written constitutions. The unsuccessful attempts of the urban lower middle classes to secure economic and political gains foreshadowed the class conflicts of the nineteenth century. While major historical interpretations of the French Revolution vary considerably, virtually all agree that it had a profound impact on the shaping of the modern world.

Unlike the French Revolution — a sweeping social revolution that broke the institutional foundations of the ancien régime and transferred power from the ruling elite to a new social group — the American Revolution transformed a monarchical society, in which colonists were subjects of the Crown, into a brand new republic. In this new republic, citizens would be participants in the political process rather than passive subjects.

Economic and Diplomatic Crises of the New American Republic

The Revolution created a severe economic depression that nearly bankrupted the national government. France and the Netherlands offered loans, but only at extremely high interest rates. Because of this shortage of capital, the new republic had an especially difficult time conducting commercial transactions. Individual states issued paper money that was essentially worthless, and many of the nation's infant industries were overwhelmed by a flood of British imports.

The southern states were hit the hardest by economic problems. Planters lost approximately 60,000 slaves during the Revolution, including around 25,000 in South Carolina and 5,000 in Georgia (Mintz 2010). Britain imposed new trade regulations that prohibited the sale of various American agricultural products in the West Indies, one of the South's leading markets (2010).

Foreign policy also presented serious challenges. Americans now lacked the protection of the British flag, which left sailors aboard American ships vulnerable to seizure by North African pirates who then sold them into slavery. In 1785, Algerian pirates boarded an American merchant vessel sailing off the coast of Portugal, seized its twenty-one-member crew, and enslaved them for twenty-one years. Over the following eight years, approximately a hundred more Americans were forced into slavery (Mintz 2010).

At the same time, Britain refused to evacuate its military posts in Detroit, Oswego, New York, and other locations in the Northwest, citing the states' refusal to restore loyalist property that had been confiscated during the Revolution. Meanwhile, Spain refused to recognize American territorial claims between the Ohio River and Florida, and in 1784 closed the Mississippi River in an effort to acquire the area that would become Kentucky and Tennessee (Mintz 2010).

British and European Resistance to American Independence

Britain was among America's greatest challenges as a new republic, repeatedly contesting U.S. independence and its rights to freedom of the seas and to commerce. Given that the United States had won its independence from Britain, it is hardly surprising that Great Britain had little desire to see the new republic succeed. There was widespread speculation that the American experiment would fail, and there was always the possibility that Britain or another European power might swoop in and reassert control.

Most European nations were reluctant to help America, fearing that a successful liberal democracy might inspire other European colonies to revolt against their own monarchies and launch their own experiments in liberal republicanism. While the French monarchy did assist the American Revolution, that assistance was motivated primarily by a desire to weaken Great Britain — France's rival — rather than any genuine commitment to American ideals.

American victory in the struggle for independence seriously undermined the French monarchy and fueled republicanism in France. It also encouraged Haitians to revolt against French colonial rule in Saint-Domingue. America's failure to repay its war loans from France further strained relations between the two countries. Those loans created a significant financial crisis in France, ultimately forcing the French monarch to convene the Estates-General in order to raise taxes and address the crisis. Once the Assembly was called, the French liberal republican revolution began; the French monarchy fell shortly thereafter, and French republicans, emboldened by success at home, began exporting their revolution to the rest of Europe.

Beginning in 1789, the European continent was engulfed in nearly two decades of revolution, counter-revolution, the Napoleonic Empire, its collapse, and the restoration of pre-revolutionary regimes under the Holy Alliance (Mintz 2010). Because European attention was so intensely focused on internal upheaval, America temporarily became a secondary concern — though it remained on the radar. Crucially, this gave the United States time to grow stronger while the pressure was temporarily off.

Britain continued to occupy frontier military posts even after the Revolutionary War ended, for several reasons. Great Britain wanted to maintain forward positions from which to reclaim the colonies and to check rival European nations — particularly France and Spain — from launching their own colonizing efforts should the confederation of newly independent states collapse. The political and economic instability within the confederation, combined with a lack of cultural unity, lent credibility to British expectations that the United States would not survive as a republic. When the Articles of Confederation were replaced by the Constitution, the United States became more politically and economically stable as well as more culturally unified, and British hopes for American failure diminished accordingly.

Britain also maintained its military presence in order to honor its alliances with Native American nations, who had sided with the British against the American revolutionaries and now needed protection from American reprisals and from the flood of settlers moving westward through the Appalachian Mountains (Mintz 2010). Additionally, Britain sought to continue exploiting the fur trade in the northwestern frontier, as American natural resources were vital to the British mercantilist economic system (Mintz 2010). Britain also wanted to remain a credible threat of intervention to ensure that the victorious revolutionaries did not mistreat British Loyalists — known as Tories — who remained in the United States after the war. While large numbers of Loyalists had emigrated to Canada or returned to England following the final British defeat, many stayed behind. Finally, Britain wished to hold American territory as leverage to ensure that Americans would pay the war reparations promised in the treaty that formally ended the Revolutionary War.