# Was the American revolution/American independence a big deal at the time? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 22, 2014, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-american-revolution-american-independence-a-big-deal-at-the-time/705341 "2014-11-22T15:32:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![turner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/22d042/32.png) [@turner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/turner)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2014, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-american-revolution-american-independence-a-big-deal-at-the-time/705341/1 "2014-11-22T15:32:32Z")
Did anyone in the world other than Britain, the US and possibly France care? ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2014, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-american-revolution-american-independence-a-big-deal-at-the-time/705341/2 "2014-11-22T15:36:30Z")
Spain did. ---
**Author:** ![turner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/22d042/32.png) [@turner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/turner)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2014, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-american-revolution-american-independence-a-big-deal-at-the-time/705341/3 "2014-11-22T17:06:02Z")
> [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > Spain did. Can you elaborate a bit? It would seem Spain would just sit back and watch as two rivals beat the crap out of each other. True they had Florida right there, but I would think they wouldn’t be concerned about their western possessions since they were a 100s of miles away and America was pretty weak after the revolution. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2014, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-american-revolution-american-independence-a-big-deal-at-the-time/705341/4 "2014-11-22T17:10:07Z")
It set a precedence for independence from the European home country for other colonies. Spanish colonies, in particular, could point to the US and say “If those English colonies can become independent, then so can we.”, although they weren’t the only ones (Haiti, also). In addition, some of the liberation rhetoric espoused during the American War of Independence was influential in the French Revolution. ETA after seeing the above post: Spain eventually joined in the American War of Independence on France/American side. And Florida, at the time of the war, was actually a British possession. I believe Spain reacquired it as a result of the war, although I’m not 100% sure of this. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2014, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-american-revolution-american-independence-a-big-deal-at-the-time/705341/5 "2014-11-22T17:11:38Z")
> [@turner](#): > > Can you elaborate a bit? It would seem Spain would just sit back and watch as two rivals beat the crap out of each other. True they had Florida right there, but I would think they wouldn’t be concerned about their western possessions since they were a 100s of miles away and America was pretty weak after the revolution. If I recall, Spain sent money & guns, & some of their fleet, late in the fight. Yes, they did > **[Spain and the American Revolutionary War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain_in_the_American_Revolutionary_War)** > > Spanish victory > Spain, through its alliance with France and as part of its conflict with Britain, played a role in the independence of the United States. Spain declared war on Britain as an ally of France, itself an ally of the American colonies. Most notably, Spanish forces attacked British positions in the south and captured West Florida from Britain in the siege of Pensacola. This secured the southern route for supplies and closed off the possibility of any British offensive through the weste... from wiki– > [@](#): > > Spain actively supported the Thirteen Colonies throughout the American Revolutionary War, beginning in 1776 by jointly funding Roderigue Hortalez and Company, a trading company that provided critical military supplies, through financing the final Siege of Yorktown in 1781 with a collection of gold and silver in Havana, Cuba.[1] Spain was allied with France through the Bourbon Family Compact, and also viewed the Revolution as an opportunity to weaken the British Empire, which had caused Spain substantial losses during the Seven Years’ War. As the newly appointed Prime Minister, José Moñino y Redondo, Count of Floridablanca, wrote in March 1777, “the fate of the colonies interests us very much, and we shall do for them everything that circumstances permit”.[2] ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2014, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-american-revolution-american-independence-a-big-deal-at-the-time/705341/6 "2014-11-22T17:16:32Z")
All the European countries with colonies certainly cared that a colony revolted, fought a war, and successfully seceded from the home country. Moreover, the American situation was an offshoot of what was essentially a world war between France and Britain that dragged in other countries from time to time. Everybody in Europe cared about that, as long as everybody is understood as those upper classes (and members of other classes like merchants and scholars) who looked beyond their borders. And proxy wars elsewhere often lead to hot wars on home turf. In the same sense, but somewhat wider, monarchies had spent the century being unsettled by growing protests among their peoples. Any successful action against a monarchy was threatening to them. As an individual immediate event, the French Revolution was the Big Deal. But few in the upper classes In Europe could fail to make the connection between the two. Did anyone outside Europe care? Probably not, except as they cared about other events happening in Europe. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2014, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-american-revolution-american-independence-a-big-deal-at-the-time/705341/7 "2014-11-22T17:26:27Z")
Did anyone else care at all? Of course. Did anyone care _all that much_? No. Heck, even Britain didn’t care _all that much_. If they had put the full resources of the British Empire into fighting the insurgent colonists, as if they were fighting for Britain’s survival, they would very probably have won. However, they had other, bigger and more urgent priorities, and did not do that. ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2014, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-american-revolution-american-independence-a-big-deal-at-the-time/705341/8 "2014-11-22T21:31:45Z")
Intellectuals all over Europe cared to the extent that the United States were the first system of government built upon the ideals of Enlightenment, which was pretty much en vogue among political philosophers at the time. In that sense, it was probably seen as something of an experiment, of putting into practice something that European philosophers only theorised about. ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2014, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-american-revolution-american-independence-a-big-deal-at-the-time/705341/9 "2014-11-22T23:02:08Z")
Russia quite a bit at least among the aristocracy because of the market here for hemp in shipbuilding and various other trades. And partly from various involvements in the previous war/wars. ---
**Author:** ![Jim\_s\_Son](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19adc/32.png) [@Jim\_s\_Son](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_s_Son)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2014, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-american-revolution-american-independence-a-big-deal-at-the-time/705341/10 "2014-11-22T23:43:13Z")
One of the most well-known and admired people in the world at the time was Benjamin Franklin. I think his stature as a scientist, author, philosopher,etc caused people, especially in the intellectual circles, to take notice of the American Revolution. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-american-revolution-american-independence-a-big-deal-at-the-time/705341/11 "2014-11-23T01:12:39Z")
> [@Schnitte](#): > > Intellectuals all over Europe cared to the extent that the United States were the first system of government built upon the ideals of Enlightenment, Not yet it wasn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-american-revolution-american-independence-a-big-deal-at-the-time/705341/12 "2014-11-23T02:24:23Z")
I get the impression British schoolchildren are taught some version of “Aww, we didn’t really want those nasty old colonies anyway. Nobody cared what they did.” The American Revolution in general and the Declaration of Independence in particular were very influential on intellectual and political thought in Europe and Latin America in the 18th and 19th centuries. From the [wiki article on the Declaration of Independence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence#Influence_in_other_countries): > [@](#): > > Many leaders of the French Revolution admired the Declaration of Independence[137] but were also interested in the new American state constitutions.[138] The inspiration and content of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789) emerged largely from the ideals of the American Revolution.[139] Its key drafts were prepared by Lafayette, working closely in Paris with his friend Jefferson. It also borrowed language from George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights.[140][141] > > According to historian David Armitage, the Declaration of Independence did prove to be internationally influential, but not as a statement of human rights. Armitage argued that the Declaration was the first in a new genre of declarations of independence that announced the creation of new states. > > Other French leaders were directly influenced by the text of the Declaration of Independence itself. The Manifesto of the Province of Flanders (1790) was the first foreign derivation of the Declaration;[142] others include the Venezuelan Declaration of Independence (1811), the Liberian Declaration of Independence (1847), the declarations of secession by the Confederate States of America (1860–61), and the Vietnamese Proclamation of Independence (1945).[143] These declarations echoed the United States Declaration of Independence in announcing the independence of a new state, without necessarily endorsing the political philosophy of the original.[144] > > Some other countries that used the Declaration as inspiration or directly copied sections from it is the Haitian declaration of 1 January 1804 from the Haitian Revolution, the United Provinces of New Granada in 1811, the Argentine Declaration of Independence in 1816, the Chilean Declaration of Independence in 1818, Costa Rica in 1821, El Salvador in 1821, Guatemala in 1821, Honduras in (1821), Mexico in 1821, Nicaragua in 1821, Peru in 1821, Bolivian War of Independence in 1825, Uruguay in 1825, Ecuador in 1830, Colombia in 1831, Paraguay in 1842, Dominican Republic in 1844, Texas Declaration of Independence in March 1836, California Republic in November 1836, Hungarian Declaration of Independence in 1849, Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand in 1835, and the Czechoslovak declaration of independence from 1918 drafted in Washington D.C. with Gutzon Borglum among the drafters. The Rhodesian declaration of independence, ratified in November 1965, is based on the American one as well, however, it omits the phrase “all men are created equal”, along with “the consent of the governed”.[114][145][146][147] The American Revolution also influenced Irish dissidents and Italian nationalists. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-american-revolution-american-independence-a-big-deal-at-the-time/705341/13 "2014-11-23T05:59:10Z")
I think a lot of the intellectual influence that people are talking about followed more from the subsequent success of the USA as a nation (particularly after the adoption of its constitution) rather than from the revolution/war of independence itself. If the USA had degenerated into a poverty stricken mess within a few decades of gaining its independence, or had remained just a few sparsely populated statelets perched on the edge of the continent, with vast Indian (or French, or whatever) controlled lands behind them, no-one would have been much impressed by the fine words of the Declaration of Independence or the intellectual credentials of some of the rebellion’s leaders. But, apart from that, of course people elsewhere took _some_ notice of the conflict between the colonists and the British, and its outcome. No doubt, if you lived somewhere where there were newspapers that reported international news (a fairly sizable _if_), it would have been covered in the newspapers. The OP’s question, however, was “Was it a big deal?” Well, big compared to what? Compared to the French Revolution that broke out a few years later (admittedly partly, but only in quite small part, inspired by the American one), or to the Napoleonic wars that followed on that, or compared to many earlier European wars, or the English Civil War, which was not all that long past, no it was not a big deal for most Europeans (and even less for, say, the Chinese), and not a terribly huge deal even for the British. It was a sideshow. Of course, in hindsight, now that America has evolved into the world’s dominant superpower (and probably even well before that, by the mid 19th century, say), the American Revolution could be seen by anyone to have been a crucial turning point in world history, but at the time, not so much. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-american-revolution-american-independence-a-big-deal-at-the-time/705341/14 "2014-11-23T06:15:02Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > I get the impression British schoolchildren are taught some version of “Aww, we didn’t really want those nasty old colonies anyway. Nobody cared what they did.” Inasmuch as they are taught about it at all (which isn’t, generally, very much), British schoolchildren are likely to be given the impression (though probably implicitly rather than explicitly) that the outcome of the American War of Independence was “a good thing”, that it was right and proper that America became independent. They won’t be taught that the British were the villains of the piece, but neither will they be taught that the outcome was a great disaster for Britain. Indeed, it was _not_ a great disaster for Britain, whose empire, prosperity, and economic and military power, continued to grow, and to eclipse its rivals, for more than a century following the loss of the North American colonies. (The real disasters for Britain, that eventually came, were World War I and World War II.) ---
**Author:** ![penultima\_thule](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penultima_thule/32/3833_2.png) [@penultima\_thule](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/penultima_thule)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-american-revolution-american-independence-a-big-deal-at-the-time/705341/15 "2014-11-23T09:18:39Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Did anyone outside Europe care? Australia certainly didn’t. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-american-revolution-american-independence-a-big-deal-at-the-time/705341/16 "2014-11-23T14:15:39Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Not yet it wasn’t. You mean because the Declaration of Independence was 1776 and the Constitution 1787? Well, firstly, there’s a lot of talk about government based on Enlightenment ideas in the DoI as well, Secondly, even the Constitution was before the French Revolution, when political ideas from Enlightenment were first tried on a large scale in Europe. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-american-revolution-american-independence-a-big-deal-at-the-time/705341/17 "2014-11-23T14:30:46Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Indeed, it was _not_ a great disaster for Britain, whose empire, prosperity, and economic and military power, continued to grow, and to eclipse its rivals, for more than a century following the loss of the North American colonies. Technical nitpick: Britain didn’t lose “the North American colonies,” it lost MOST of the North American Colonies. Quebec, Newfoundland, Jamaica, etc., stayed British for a long, long time. Edit: Wiki has a nice [list](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_America#List_of_colonies_in_1783_in_North_America.2C_the_Caribbean_and_South_America). ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-american-revolution-american-independence-a-big-deal-at-the-time/705341/18 "2014-11-23T15:37:46Z")
It wasn’t a big deal at the time, outside of the northeast. Most everyone else was busy hunting, fishing and texting. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-american-revolution-american-independence-a-big-deal-at-the-time/705341/19 "2014-11-23T17:11:01Z")
> [@Schnitte](#): > > You mean because the Declaration of Independence was 1776 and the Constitution 1787? Well, firstly, there’s a lot of talk about government based on Enlightenment ideas in the DoI as well, Secondly, even the Constitution was before the French Revolution, when political ideas from Enlightenment were first tried on a large scale in Europe. See my post #13. The U.S. constitution certainly had not had time to prove itself a _success_ before the French revolution broke out. Also, of course, most of those Enlightenment ideas that inspired America’s founding fathers came from France in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-american-revolution-american-independence-a-big-deal-at-the-time/705341/20 "2014-11-23T17:17:45Z")
I think it’s worth mentioning that all the Indian nations anywhere near the 13 colonies cared. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-american-revolution-american-independence-a-big-deal-at-the-time/705341.md?page=2)