In my International Studies class, we just finished a unit on WW2, and we are transitioning to the Cold War. The teacher gave us some questions to answer in class. One of them was about allies turning into enemies. It was about an undeclared war by the US against a former ally, “Long before World War 2.” A hint included with the question strongly suggested that the war was fought against France. I had no idea, and asked the teacher. He didn’t know either, and said he’d get back to us.
So when did the United States wage war on France? Am I missing the hint?
I have never heard of such a war. The US did in fact combat Axis aligned French troops (Vichy France) in WW 2 in Tunisa. Other than that, the question may have been in reference to the occasional scirmishes and outright wars between England and the US. I know there was some trouble during the American Civil War… and outright war in 1812 as well as the Revolutionary War (of course)
I’m not sure this is what you are looking for, as it is WAY before WW I, let alone WWII.
It seems we wen’t through a Quasi-War with France back in 1798, sort of a naval engagement protecting our interests in the Mediteranian sea.
Didn’t anybody read “John Adams”? There are whole chapters about the undeclared war against France. It was the biggest crisis of Adams’ presidency.
Because of it, America started the Department of the Navy, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, and there was a whole bunch of bad feelings over the XYZ Affair.
The fledlging American republic was almost ripped in two over it as the country split up into pro-England and pro-France camps.
I had heard of the thing with France around the turn of the 19th century before, but I didn’t know much about it. That’s an interesting link Epimetheus provided. I suspect that is the event TOO’s worksheet alludes to, since the questions were “about allies turning into enemies”. France was a big ally of the US’s during the Revolutionary War, and less than twenty years later we were fighting a little naval war versus them. I guess this is meant to suggest a parellel with the US and USSR going from being wartime allies to bitter enemies.
The US and France had entered into an alliance in 1777 and according to the terms of the agreement, it was still in effect in 1798. So it was a touchy issue about whether or not you should be firing cannonballs at your ally.
And France was much different in 1798 than it was in 1777.
The OP says the question <b>implies</i> it’s France, but doesn’t state so. The line “long before WW2” makes me think perhaps it’s a reference to US troops fighting against the Bolsheviks in Russia 1918-1920 (?). Russia of course had been our ally in WWI; immediately afterwards, we’re fighting an undeclared war against them. (True, there had been an intervening revolution in Russia, but then, hadn’t there also been an intervening revolution in France during the period under discussion?)
Perhaps someone with knowledge of the ins and outs of diplomatic history can tell us about US-French relations relative to the French setting up Maximilian in Mexico. I understand that they thought they could do this without much Monroe Doctorine interference from the US because of our then-current Civil War.
My first thought was Mexico, inasmuch as US Army troops were deployed against Pancho Villa. I doubt those border skirmishes count as war, although Villa did invade the United States.
In a quick review of peoples and nations we were allies with in WWII but had fought in undeclared wars, I came up with:
France: before we actually declared war on England in 1812, we had been in a shooting mode with the French navy (as other posters have pointed out) for some months and then patched the alliance back up. Both England and France felt free to hassle US shipping.
Then there was the French debacle in Mexico which fell apart for numerous reasons, but we didn’t really come to grief with the French in that one.
2)Russia: as was pointed out we sent in troops (along with several other countries) to try and squash the Revolution. If I remember correctly the US troops mainly fought up and down the siberian railroad.
3)Philippines: we were involved in the long bloody civil war there. We lost men, we burned villages and executed batches of Philipino prisoners. It was a nasty business all around with the US acting mostly on its nascent overseas imperial drive. The Philipino people showed us the mistake of trying to make colonies. That’s why we have so complex of a love/hate relationship with the Philipines.
That’s the major pre-WWII conflicts I can think of, and by now you’re into the paranoia of the Truman years and the bloody spiral that eventually lead the US into Vietnam.
Twice with France, actually-- first at the time shortly after the French Revolution of the XYZ affair, then during WWII when France was basically a province of Germany. Yeah, France doesn’t like to talk about that. Watch The Sorrow and the Pity sometime.
“Former ally” eliminates Russia, as we were never, technically, allied with Russia prior to the anti-Bolshevist intervention of 1919. (They were withdrawing from WWI by the time we were declaring war on Germany.)
“Long time before WWII” eliminates Vichy France–a product of WWII.
That pretty much moves it back to our altercation with Napoleanic impressment and merchant seizures, as mentioned earlier.
As a side note, the fledgling U.S. owed imperial France a lot of money following our war for independence. When the Bourbon monarchy fell, the U.S. declared the debt null and void since the original holder of the note (the monarchy, rather than the country) no longer existed. (Include this in your perspective when people start carping about the (destitute) European nations that never repaid the U.S. for WWII expenditures.)
Not quite. The US enters WWI in April 1917; Russia is still in the war until the October Revolution (November in the West). Even after that, it takes a couple months for the Brest-Litovsk Treaty between Soviet Russia and Germany to end the war on the Eastern Front.
The intervention in Russia would therefore qualify as a war with a former ally, if you’re willing to accept the fact that you’ve got an entirely different state, albeit ruling over substantially the same population / territory.
Of course, the US never signed on to the Triple Entente, leaving it, I believe, as a “co-belligerent” against Germany.
Yeah, I’d have considered Russia a co-belligerent, not an ally. I am not aware of any diplomatic activity or military pacts between czarist Russia and the U.S. in the period of 1917 that we were each at war with Germany. (I could have missed them, of course; Russia was certainly never large in the U.S. consciousness during WWI.)