History Guy Commentary and News

The recent election of  Nicolas Sarkozy as the new President of France brings the issue of French-American relations to mind.  The U.S. and France have a long but strange relationship, often centered on the question of war and peace, that literally goes back to before the founding of the United States as a nation.

When the original Thirteen Colonies were indeed colonies of the British Empire and Canada belonged to France, nearly continual warfare blazed across the frontier between English and French America.  Eventually, the British won the wars and expelled the French Empire from Canada, but this conflict helped spark the idea of autonomy and outright independence in the minds of many influential American-English colonists.

As most school children in America know, France was America’s most important ally in the War of Independence.  French aid was critical to the British defeat, but the consequences of this military intervention for the French monarchy were eventually negative.  Part of the economic problems France experienced which led to the French Revolution (which broke out only 8 years after the Franco-American victory at Yorktown), were brought on by the financial burden of fighting the Revolutionary War in America, as well as the philosophical and political ideas that crossed the Atlantic from America. 

Ironically, many Americans were horrified by the violence of the French Revolution, and tensions built up that led to the so-called "Quasi-War" between the United States and Revolutionary France.  This naval war lasted from 1798 to 1800.  Two years later, the new French Emperor, Napoleon I, sold France’s Louisiana colony to the United States.  He needed the money to fight his wars against Britain.  The Louisiana Purchase, as it is known in the U.S., effectively doubled the size of the country.

Relations between the United States and France reached another low point during the American Civil War, which coincided with a French invasion of Mexico, which is America’s southern neighbor.  France (and Britain), considered intervening in the Civil War on behalf of the breakaway Confederate States of America (the South).  President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which freed a majority of American slaves, along with U.S. victories in the war, convinced France and Britain to remain neutral.  Following the fall of the South in 1865, the U.S. supported the Mexican government both diplomatically and militarily (there was a very real threat by the U.S. to send in troops).  This support helped the current French Emperor, Napoleon III, to end his ill-conceived war in Mexico.

For the remainder of the 1800s, the U.S. pretty much ignored European issues.  The outbreak of war in Europe in 1914, in what would eventually become known as World War One, set the scene for America’s first military intervention in Europe.

America declared war on Germany and her allies in 1917, and millions of U.S. troops entered France to help her fight the invading Germans.  Many Americans saw this aid to France as payback for French help against the British in the American Revolution.  The U.S. later saved France again when we again sent millions of troops to liberate her from the Germans in World War Two.  (See the Invasion of Normandy).

After World War Two, America and France both joined (as founders) the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, (NATO), which was created in order to stop the spread of Communism in Europe. Since the end of World War Two, the U.S. and France have been allies in the Korean War, the First Gulf War, and in the current War in Afghanistan.  We have also supported each other in other ways as well.  For example, when France fought in Vietnam in the 1940s and 1950s, the U.S. supplied a great deal of military material and money to help the French fight against the Vietnamese Communists. 

The two old allies have disagreed sharply on several issues, such as the Anglo-French Invasion of Egypt in 1956 and the current War in Iraq, but overall, history shows that France and the United States are old, old, friends.  Friends who occasionally squabble and argue, but when it comes down to it, they do support each other.  The election of Sarkozy, who readily admires America and American culture, should help ease recent tensions between the two allies.