What was the French Revolution and how did it influence Americans? Did it change the history of our country or was it an international distraction? It was definitely bloody, and it definitely changed the world. So did the revolution in Haiti, the first independent nation created by descendants of African slaves. And finally, there were revolutions in Mexico and Latin America as nations south of the border fought for their freedom against Spain. Sound familiar? Once you begin a revolution, you never know where it will lead. The United States were the first. Now the dominoes fell.
THE PROMISE AND PERIL OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION (255) How was the American and French Revolution similar and different? Here’s one site that offers a comparison. The French Revolution, many historians suggest, was in some ways more influential than the American – but for our purposes, let’s think about it’s impact on the US. It wasn’t as easy to just say that the American people either supported or didn’t support France or the French people. As with all things in APUSH, it’s a lot more complicated than that.
In 1800, American ships carried an astonishing 92 percent of all commerce between America and Europe. The economic benefits were most evident in cities along the Atlantic coast but radiated as well into the surrounding countryside, where cargoes of agricultural and forest goods, as well as the provisions required by ships’ crews, were produced. America’s expanding commerce, however, generated problems.
While England and France sought access to American goods, each was determined to prevent those goods from reaching the other, if necessary by stopping American ships and confiscating their cargoes. When locked in such a deadly struggle, neither belligerent was willing to bind itself by the formalities of international law guaranteeing neutral trade.
America’s relations with England were additionally complicated by the Royal Navy’s practice of impressing American sailors into service aboard its warships to meet the growing demand for seamen. This posed the difficult problem of protecting American citizens without getting drawn into the European conflict.
The French treaty of 1778 compounded the government’s dilemma. It appeared to require that the United States aid France much as France had assisted the American states against England a decade and a half earlier. Americans sympathetic to the French cause argued that the commitment still held. Others, fearing the consequences of American involvement and the political infection that closer ties with revolutionary France might bring, insisted that the treaty had lapsed when the French king was overthrown.
So, this became a political issue dividing Hamilton and Jefferson supporters too. It became complicated also by the fact that this international incident could (and would) establish a precedent in foreign policy. It became the unspoken law of the land that the US would not interfere with European affair from Washington to Wilson (1917) in order to keep us out of ‘entangling alliances’. Did Washington do the right thing? National self-interest would say ‘yes’. But to what extent can a leader of a nation direct a nation’s foreign policy in a democratic society without the consent of the people? This is a question Americans would struggle with for hundreds of years, and even now – as the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan become semi-permanent fixtures of our collective memories.
DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTIONS IN EUROPE AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD (257) Now it is Haiti’s turn – and the time for the leaders of the US to face the consequences of their racist economic system of slavery. Revolutions against France were good, but black Africans declaring their independence was bad. Notice that the US withheld recognition until after the Civil War. Coincidence? Hardly.
THE DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICAN SOCIETIES (262) Genet stirs up trouble and Washington responds. The real story here, though, is the rise of committees and ‘societies’ modeled after the Sons of Liberty from the Revolutionary period. Can a democratic society manage all of these diverse opinions? It’s a test of Federalism. Was there a possibility of continuing the Revolution? Maybe the Anti-Federalists believed so. Jefferson certainly did. For that matter, so did Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution in China.
JAY’S CONTROVERSIAL TREATY (264) Can Jay win? It doesn’t seem so. While he addresses some issues, he leaves others untouched. How do we know that treaties are in the interests of all Americans? This is the trouble with complicated legislation and geopolitical decisions. You can’t please them all. In this case, though, Jay’s blunder again splits the nation into regions. We’ll see over and over again how the early republic’s sectional identity creates many different challenges for each subsequent administration leading up to the Civil War.
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