I’m not so sure about that - as I understand it, the Emperor never cared much for Louisiana and considered it a poor investment for all the men and materials he had to pour into it. He also needed all the cannon and soldiers protecting it back home to fight in his continental revolutionary wars. The point of selling it wasn’t just to get the money (although it was also welcome) but to get rid of it.
He would never have sold it to the British, that much is dead certain, but other parties could have been interested in a gigantic piece of real estate - Mexico, Russia, Spain… Austro-Hungary maybe ?
OTOH, without the Independence (or the Louisiana purchase), Napoleonic wars might have spread over to you guys.
[QUOTE=Latro]
There might not have been a French revolution.
[/QUOTE]
I seriously doubt that. The French Revolution was a bread revolt that went a little too far - it only became a Revolution when the people leading the mob realized just what they had done and figured: in for a penny, in for a pound.
It’s true that American thinkers and philosophies influenced the nascent State to some extent, but the Revolution itself wasn’t encouraged by the American one in any way, shape or form. The people were just fed right up, and that was that.
Also, France had another Republic to model themselves on much closer to home - in the Netherlands. Also a long history of animosity with them of course, but that was the Kings’ problem, not the People’s.
There’s a bit of a problem here, though: if you wait until the “existential threat” is clear and undeniable, it’s likely too late. If the British policies continued to impoverish the colonies, eventually successful rebellion would be impossible.
Mind you, this exact same argument explains why the South chose 1861 to secede, but the major difference there is that the “way of life” that was threatened was, in itself, a moral wrong.
It’s not so much that the ideas came from America, republicanism was kind of “in the air”, and France certainly had its own thinkers.
What might just have given the push to those intellegentia “leading the mob” to actually get involved, was the example of success from the American revolution.
This inspiration for French revolutionaries from America was real. Just think of people like Lafayette and Thomas Paine.
While the Dutch republic was indeed a great inspiration for the Americans, I have never heard anything that it was especially inspirational to the French. At least not as direct as the American example.
Maybe because they saw from closer- up that the Orange family had already assumed a lot of kinglike powers and the Republiek was more like a monarchy in many ways.
In fact the French revolution sparked a new republican zeal in the Netherlands. Known as the pattriotic movement.
Why would the minority become a majority? What was the incentive, the catalist? If everyone was happy with the way things were - why would anyone want change? We like crazy King George. Why would England even have a Parliment? Everything is perfect just the way it is. God Save the King.
Except it wasn’t perfect or even tolerable. People fight for what they believe in. One of the reasons the minority in Parliment became a majority was because of the war against a British colony.
Imagine you were making a case to an English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Canadian, German mother that her son must go to the Americas to prevent people from thinking for themselves or ruling themselves. Do you just tell them that the king is always right, STHU, and pack your bag?
The average life span for colonial males in 1776 was around 35 years. Who’s going to wait 100 years for things to get better?
You seem to be missing the importance of the “no representation in Parliment” part. Your list of current “violations” can still be settled in the U.S. Congress by our “elected representatives”.
The French Revolution may have happened regardless of events in the colonies, but I think the American revolution exacerbated the conditions in France that agitated the population. One of the big issues in France was the extreme inequality- the people at the top lived high on the hog and most everyone else was destitute. France loaning so much money to the Continental Congress to help with fighting Britain probably made that situation worse.
As for a cassus belli, I think the OP ought to read some of the books mentioned in this thread. While there were plenty of Tories around, Colonial sentiment leaned increasingly toward independence and the notion that British rule was intolerable. The British did a poor job adjusting to the unique conditions in the Colonies, or they just didn’t give a rip, but either way the independence movement got a lot of traction with both the elites and the ‘common folk’. When the relationship broke down enough, war was what was left. Sad perhaps, but it is history and not a philosophy lecture.
Since they weren’t even “united” states let alone a United States, why would any of the 13 individual colonies buy the land? For an expansion that the British Crown wouldn’t have allowed? Where would the money come from? Which independent colony was the richest? Virginia??? Did Virginia want the land?
That’s what I would dispute - absent the American Revolution, there would still have been mobs of starving commoners raiding the armories, the National Guard would still have flipped, the Bastille would still have been besieged, the Louvres would still have been surrounded, the royals would still have been forced to flee their own palace… and someone was always going to step up to the plate to sort out the confusion and chaos.
The differences might lie in how the revolt would have spread from Paris outwards, and the shape of the new regime. There was a widespread popular notion that the King was a good, caring man who bled for his subjects but was being misled and taken advantage of by foreign powers, petty nobles and self-serving advisors, so perhaps we’d have ended up with a parliamentary monarchy of some description ; perhaps the idea of doing away with nobility entirely might have been too “out there” ; perhaps the particular brand of bourgeois thinkers sailing on the tide of popular unrest and “betraying” the insurrection to steer it towards their own philosophies would have been slightly different. Maybe we could have avoided the whole Terror business, and Napoleon’s eventual tyranny too.
In other words, the shape of the aftermath would/could certainly have been different, wildly so even. But the Revolution itself would have happened regardless of the success (or failure) of the American example, I believe. That tired old horse was going to buck, one way or another.
Selling it to the Thirteen would have been absolutely out of the question, since the 13 would have been “the British” still. Which Napoleon was in something of a tiff with :).
You might think that. Looking at it with modern eyes.
Truth is that back then loyalty was a noble virtue. Loads of normal people were loyal towards their king and viewed those ‘freedom fighters’ as treasonous terrorists.
In other words the ‘French Revolution’ might not have happened
I agree that there might have been severe riots in Paris, maybe even local uprisings in other parts of the country too.
I am not saying it wouldn’t have happened at all without the american example, just that might have just lent the edge to it becoming more than just food riots.
Modern eyes only have to look at history to see that monarchies were constantly being replaced. Fewer and fewer “loyalists” supported the kings and monarchs royally idiotic decrees.
I’m reading Lord Macaulay’s History of England right now, which deals at length with the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Without falling into the trap of Whig history, he does make a point of saying that right up until the Revolution (actually, technically, during and beyond it), many of the most diehard Tories that joined or accepted William of Orange’s descent on England continued to believe in the Prerogative of the King and James II’s right to rule.
They would have continued to remain so steadfast if James II hadn’t been such a tool in how he used his Prerogative. He made Whigs of his most natural supporters - there was no rise in Whiggery in isolation: the government fostered and nurtured it to its own ruin.
It was the same with America in the 1770s. The evidence for an isolated rise in principled people arguing for rule by the people is spurious at best - there were some indeed, but they weren’t well listened to - until the British Government started making such huge bungles that it gave credence to their words. If it wasn’t for this, I daresay the Tory constituency in the Colonies would have been dominant, and any attempt to garner a Revolution on the scale of what occurred, and indeed on the basis of ‘All men are created equal’, would have been much more difficult.
Never underestimate how beneficial dreadful governments can be, I guess!
By the time the king’s palace had been attacked, it wasn’t just a food riot any more. Hell, by the time the very first barracks’ doors were smashed in, it wasn’t just a food riot any more. A line in the sand had been crossed, and not just crossed but people had scribbled offensive jokes and drawn dicks in the sand all around the line :). Even had the fire died down on its own somehow, the nobles couldn’t have just come back and pretended like nothing of import had happened and business would henceforth continue as usual. There would have been widespread changes to the structure of society - call it a putsch or a coup or a regime change or a revolution, the point is life would have changed for the Average Jean, for the better one hopes.
Is there one in particular you would recommend? I’m not so interested in the war itself, but in the lead up to the war, and especially in the how the people on both sides (particularly in America) understood the cause of the war and in how historians have looked at those justifications.
Are you sure? Maybe I just haven’t gotten it, but I hope you’ll keep trying to help me see the light. What is your answer to the question of what justifies war and how did the Revolution meet those criteria? How do you respond to this post by blindboyard, which seems to be my impression of events as well?
I’m not a partisan who’s convinced that the Revolution was wrong, I’ve just never seen the justification laid out in modern terms. Sure I’ve read the Declaration of Independence and I’ve heard of the Intolerable Acts, but how do those charges compare to other political injustices of the day, or of modern times? Most of them seem to derive from the concerns of the ruling elite in the colonies and the merchant and smuggler classes. What of the 99%? Could someone please spell it out for me as if I’d never read a history book and as if it weren’t all self-evident (to coin a phrase).
Let me put it another way. Let’s say aliens kidnap George Washington in 1776 and take him to the bridge of their starship. They explain to him that they’ve read the Declaration of Independence, and they understand his gripes. They have immense power, and can make the US of A a free and independent nation without shedding a drop of blood. They’ll do it with a mind control beam, that will make everyone in America suddenly realize that they’re free to govern themselves, and everyone in England will just instantly accept that fact.
There’s a catch, though. The alien leader motions to an ensign, who presses a button. A glass panel that Washington has been standing on turns transparent, and he sees a mass of people in giant holding area beneath him. The alien leader explains that they’ve transported to the ship 75,000 men of military age, with a smattering of civilians (collateral damage, you see), from both the colonies and from England. If Washington gets his wish for independence granted, the ensign will press another button, and all 75,000 on board will be sucked out into the cold emptiness of space while Washington watches.
Would he do it? Would you? Would Joe Q Citizen, a small farmer from the outskirts of Philadelphia do it?
At the end of the day, I think, there is no criteria for what justifies war and rebellion - I honestly don’t think you could firm them down so clearly.
[QUOTE=The Lord Macaulay]
If, indeed, it were possible to lay down a clear and accurate rule which might forbid men to rebel against Trajan, and yet leave them at liberty to rebel against Caligula, such a rule might be highly beneficial. But no such rule had ever been, or ever would be, framed. To say that rebellion was lawful under some circumstances, without accurately defining those circumstances, was to say that every man might rebel whenever he thought fit; and a society in which every man rebelled whenever he thought fit would be more miserable than a society governed by the most cruel and licentious despot.
[/QUOTE]
