From Volume 2, Issue Number 50 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Dec. 16, 2003
This Week in History

December 15 - 21, 1777

Everyone with a minimal knowledge of American history, knows that King Louis XVI's France provided the crucial margin of support to the American Revolution, allowing the War of Independence to be won. Yet, I wish to devote this column this week to the French government's recognition of American independence, which occurred on Dec. 17, 1777.

In the small, of course, that act of recognition was due to the intense and brilliant diplomatic activity of America's greatest Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin, who had been in Paris negotiating for support, and recruiting international aid for more than a year. But, there is a larger point to be understood today: specifically, the fact that the American Revolution was a project of an international, mostly European, republican elite, who saw the establishment of our republic as a "beacon of hope" and "temple of liberty," for all mankind.

Even the numbskulls who mouth off these days about the French opposition to the criminal U.S. war against Iraq, would have to admit that the United States could never have won the Revolutionary War without French recognition, and subsequent military and financial support. The French gave us millions of dollars, one of their greatest sons, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the deployment of their Navy, all of which were decisive in the outcome of the war against the British. There were more French, than American soldiers at the Battle of Yorktown, the last major battle of the war, which led to the British decision to turn to negotiation.

Of course, the French support was not unconnected to their "inter-imperialist" rivalry with the British Empire, but, there was actually more to it than that, as Franklin always argued.

Paris, like other European capitals, was actually a center of republican ferment, in favor of the American Revolution. Indeed, the idea of establishing a republic on American shores had been taken up by republican circles going back as far as the 15th-Century Italian Renaissance, and had been continued through the networks of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the leading republican genius of the late 17th-early 18th Century, throughout Europe. These circles had sent settlers to America, and had connived to put governors, and others, in place, in order to establish republican governments. Leading intellectuals and artists, such as Ludwig van Beethoven (also born this week, in 1770), Friedrich Schiller, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Jonathan Swift (considerably earlier), all took up the American cause, more or less explicitly.

Thus, when Franklin went to Paris to seek support, he was not coming out of the blue, nor was he approaching a court unfamiliar with the American republican cause. He was approaching a court which had, 100 years earlier, seen the flourishing of the pro-industrial, pro-science, dirigist economic measures of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, and of Leibniz himself, who worked at Colbert's Academy.

True, Europe was never able to free itself of its oligarchy, and spawn true republics like the United States, but there is more that unites us, than separates us, in terms of the republican tradition. "Us against them" is an ideology which was appropriate neither then, nor now. In remembering our debt to the French of 1777, let us revive the republican tradition of respect for the dignity of man, in our relations with Europe, and all nations of the world.

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