The French helped the Americans against the British in the American Colonies’ war for independence, because they wanted to put a thumb in the Eye of England, who had beaten the French in the French and Indian war and had taken Canada and the Maritimes from them as settlement.
It was less than a generation before the War for Independence that the French were sending Indian raiding parties into the English colonies to kill, steal, and take slaves.
In fact, part of the reason for the imposition of additional taxes by the Crown was to offset the financial losses it suffered defending the colonies in the French and Indian war.
A whole contingent of more than 600 Scottish Highlanders were wiped out by the French and Indians at Ticonderoga, so the British had quite a stake.
If the Crown weren’t so recalcitrant, they would have allowed the Colonies to have representation, at least in the House of Commons. Not only did England fail to do this, the Crown took the Colonies’ demands for representation as effrontery to be punished. Soon, the taxes became burdensome, and the resistance to it prompted the Crown to establish occupation forces.
Very bad thinking on the part of George III.
Not that I’m a Royalist, but the Crown did prohibit slavery throughout the empire in 1833 without any bloodshed.
Once free, however, the Colonies, organized as the United States, established the freest population and free market in the world. Due to the enormous freedom the Americans enjoyed as soveriegn citizens, an alien concept everywhere else in the world, the USA soon became the most powerful economic and military force in the world.
If it weren’t for the albatross of slavery around its neck, the USA may have achieved a greater greatness and greater blessings.
The kind of thinking that cursed George III brought pain, suffering, war and death to the new nation in just three generations.
The kind of thinking that cursed George III also poisoned the relations between the Indigenous peoples and the new Federal Government.
Nevertheless, the USA was able to adjust for its shortcomings, sometimes through bloodshed, but mostly through constitutionall established process.
No freer society has ever existed, and no greater economic or military force has ever existed.
Brilliant analysis. Thank you.
“USA soon became the most powerful economic and military force.” True. We know the causes (God, virtue and free markets). We know the obstacles (selfishness, vice, and social services). And we know the solution (prayer, virtue and free markets).