PARIS, TREATY OF (1783)
PARIS, TREATY OF (1783). This treaty between Great Britain and the United States, signed in Paris on 3 September 1783, marked the consummation of American independence. At the same time, Great Britain also signed peace treaties with France, an ally of the United States, and Spain, an ally of France; it had signed a treaty with the Netherlands the previous day. More important, the treaty is rightly considered the greatest triumph in the history of American diplomacy.
To secure its independence, the new United States had entered into an alliance with France (after the tremendous victory over Burgoyne at Saratoga in October 1777), and France, in turn, had agreed to an alliance with Spain. While America had achieved its goal—since Britain had, in principle, accepted the idea of American independence—Spain had not gained its objective, the re-capture of Gibraltar. And, given these entangling alliances, the conflict dragged on, though the fighting had largely ended in North America.
There were other issues as well. Spain, for example, also wanted to limit the size of the new United States well east of the Mississippi River, to protect Spanish holdings along the Gulf Coast in the area that became Florida and Texas. Britain also wanted to limit the size of the United States, to protect its position in Canada and with the Native American tribes. France wanted to weaken its traditional opponent, Britain, as much as possible, which required a stronger United States to compete with Britain in North America.
America's diplomats John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and Henry Laurens engaged in a shrewd negotiation. Beginning in March 1782 (Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown on 19 October 1781), they opened negotiations first with the government of Prime Minister Charles Rockingham and later with the government of the earl of Shelburne, Sir William Petty. They achieved success with a preliminary, conditional treaty, signed on 30 November 1782, which would not take effect until Britain reached a settlement with France, and France delayed until Britain and Spain achieved a settlement. Again, Spain wanted Gibraltar, which the British were not willing to return.
The conditional British-American treaty fixed the boundaries of the United States to the northeast and northwest, established the Mississippi River as the western
boundary (a great and grand achievement) and secured navigation along the Mississippi for British and American citizens (although the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico flowed through Spanish-controlled New Orleans); the treaty also granted Americans fishing rights off Newfoundland's Grand Banks and the right to cure fish in uninhabited parts of nearby landfall, but not in Newfoundland itself. The treaty also committed the U.S. government to guarantee repayment of debts to British creditors and to improve the treatment of American Loyalists, including the restitution of property seized during the revolutionary fighting.
While these negotiations were taking place, the British stiffened their position after learning that Spain's long siege of Gibraltar had failed. John Jay, in particular, had great fear that France and its minister Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes, might seek a separate peace with Britain, at America's expense, to satisfy France's ally Spain. There were the typical machinations associated with such important diplomatic maneuverings. But Benjamin Franklin, though sick with gout, managed to imply to Vergennes that further French opposition to the treaty he had helped negotiate with Britain could drive America back into British arms; he also wrote to Vergennes that the Americans and French would not want the British to see them divided, and thus France should support what the United States had achieved in its separate negotiation. For Vergennes, this helped him out of a difficult situation, since he could not tie France's foreign policy to Spain's longtime quest to regain Gibraltar. Vergennes was able to use America's initiative to convince the Spanish to sign its treaty.
And, thus, on 3 September 1783, this intricate conflict came to a close and the United States achieved its independence and, by gaining land between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, laid the ground for what would become a vast country.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bemis, Samuel Flagg. The Diplomacy of the American Revolution. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983.
Dull, Jonathan R. A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985.
Hutson, James H. John Adams and the Diplomacy of the American Revolution. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1980.
Kaplan, Lawrence S. Colonies into Nation: American Diplomacy, 1763–1801. New York: Macmillan, 1972.
