Friday, April 17, 2020

The Journey To Independence For The Americans Was A Long Road Traveled

The journey to independence for the Americans was a long road traveled and it also was a road of luck and coincidence for the Americans and for the French. But in the end the Americans got just about everything they wanted out of the war and the French got almost everything they wanted, but for the most part they both got what they initially wanted and that was independence for the Americans and revenge for the French. At the beginning the French and the British came to the new world because of religious persecution after the revocation of the Edict of Nates in 1685. With both the French and British in the new world, the British was waiting for a fight to break out. In the past , the British and the French always had little fights here and there no matter where they were. Because of this fear of the French, the colonists never explored no farther than the Alleghenies because they didn't have the protection of the British navy. When it came to the French exploration, the French explored as far as Lake Michigan. By 1750, France claimed the St. Lawrence River Valley, the Great Lakes and the entire Mississippi basin from present day Minnesota to the gulf, and from western Pennsylvania to Nebraska. Some of the reason that the French had such success at exploration is because they had good relations with the Indians and they were rarely threatened to displace the Indians from their hunting grounds to make room for settlers. As long as the French kept good relations with the Indians and kep t claiming vast territories, then the British could only go as far as the Atlantic coast. But in 1763, the Treaty of Paris changed everything, the French had been defeated in all parts of the world and they gave up the land west of the Alleghenies and the Mississippi in return for the sugar island. France gave Spain the entire Louisiana territory west to the Mississippi and the town of New Orleans. France was no longer a rival to the British in North America. The French were troubled by the Treaty of Paris and thought that the lands of the west Indies were better than all of North America, so they gave it up. But they all agreed that the Treaty of Paris had to be avenged. The thought of the revenge by the French came into plat only 12 years later when the colonists revolted against Britain and coincidental the only reason the colonists got the chance to revolt to get independence is because the British pushed them out of North America. Also what help the revolt came about is the imperial policies that the British put on the colonists. The seven years' war depleted the British treasury and they figured that the colonists could help pay for it. "Out of all the policy the British made the most aggravating was those over territories, as the Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited settlement west of the Alleghenies in order to assure peace with the Indians , the Quebec Act of 1774, which made all the area north of the Ohio River part of the province of Quebec and restored French civil there."(France and the American War for Independence) These acts want against everything the Americans wanted to do mainly because they wanted those lands and they wanted to explore. Many Americans saw taxes as an ingratitude toward them and their rights. Over the years the colonist started to think of themselves, not as British colonists but as separate and equal interest or the North American continent. After April of 1775, things began to fall in place even the efforts from both sides of reconciliation. But the Americans knew that if they were to go against the British, which had the world biggest navy and army, then they would need some help from somebody, but who? "Of course the French , a country that just suffered a humiliating defeat by the British and a country who wants some of the European power back seems like the perfect ally fro the Americans, and so they made the French "Connection"."(France and the American War for Independence) When Great Britain found out