The Treaty of Paris brought the American Revolution to a formal conclusion, as Great Britain officially recognized the United States as an independent, sovereign nation.
The United States’ ultimate success in winning the Revolutionary War did not immediately translate into an easy peace. The new nation’s primary objective in the years following the first Marquess of Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown was to gain formal recognition of its independence from Great
It quickly became evident that the United States could not expect altruistic generosity from either its friends or its former adversaries.
The U.S. diplomats at the peace conference were a match for their French and English counterparts, despite problems in undertaking their important task. Of those appointed by the Continental Congress to negotiate a peace, Thomas Jefferson did not serve because of the fatal illness of his wife, and Henry Laurens was a prisoner in England during the most crucial period of the peacemaking discussions. Two other appointees were serving in previous diplomatic assignments—John Jay at Madrid and John Adams at the Hague—and did not reach Paris until months after Benjamin Franklin began discussions with the British in April, 1782. (Jay reached Paris in late June, while Adams did not arrive until the end of October.)
In London, Lord North had been prime minister throughout the entire war, but King George III largely had dictated government policy. The revolt of the American colonies and their probable loss from the British Empire led to North’s resignation in March, 1782. The second Marquess of Rockingham succeeded him but died several months later. The second earl of Shelburne, the home secretary in Rockingham’s cabinet, had been assigned the responsibility of dealing with the Americans. Shelburne sent to Paris a Scottish merchant named Richard Oswald, an elderly acquaintance of Franklin, to start conversations aimed at luring the venerable commissioner away from France.
Oswald argued that the former British colonies in America could gain more by dealing separately with the mother country, but while Franklin revealed a willingness to speak with the British representatives, he remained firmly committed to the Franco-American military alliance created in 1778. He did, however, assure Oswald that a generous peace would go far toward rebuilding ties between the English-speaking nations. When Rockingham died in July, Shelburne became prime minister but was reluctant to concede total independence to the former colonies.
When Jay finally arrived in Paris in June, he expressed his deep suspicion of French intentions, correctly believing that Charles Gravier de Vergennes, French minister of foreign affairs, favored Spanish ambitions in the disputed region between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. The count de Aranda, Spanish ambassador to France, informed Jay of the unwillingness of Charles III, the Bourbon king of Spain, to recognize the United States’ western claims to all lands to the east bank of the Mississippi River north of 31 degrees north latitude and to free navigation of the entire river. Subsequently, Aranda and Joseph Mathias Gérard de Rayneval, Vergennes’s secretary and diplomatic courier, proposed that the region between the Great Lakes and the Ohio River remain in British hands and that much of the Southwest should become a Spanish protectorate. When he learned that Gérard de Rayneval had slipped away to London, Jay suspected that the Bourbons might negotiate with Great Britain at U.S. expense.
Led by Jay, who personally took the initiative in August, the U.S. commissioners assured Shelburne of their willingness to deal directly with the British if London would change Oswald’s instructions to permit him to negotiate openly and with full authority with the representatives of the United States. This would be an implicit recognition of U.S. sovereignty, which Great Britain had hitherto refused to acknowledge. Shelburne now responded positively, believing that the patriots could be separated from France and would be more cooperative with Great Britain in the future. Oswald received his increased authority in September, and the negotiations rapidly clarified the details of an agreement.
Franklin was disappointed at not gaining Canada, one of his personal objectives in the negotiations, but the boundaries agreed upon in the preliminary treaty did meet the United States’ aspirations in the northwest and southwest. The Mississippi River was designated as the primary western boundary of the United States. In addition, the new nation was given access to the Canadian fishing grounds, and British forces would be evacuated from U.S. soil. In return, the U.S. commissioners agreed to validate prewar debts owed to British subjects and to recommend to the states that they return confiscated Loyalist property. On balance, the United States gained more than the British in the concessions each side made to reach a satisfactory conclusion.
The preliminary articles, signed on November 30, 1782, although without the advice or consent of Vergennes, did not technically violate the letter of the Franco-American Alliance, for the treaty was not to go into effect until France and Great Britain also had come to terms. What the commissioners had violated, however, were the instructions given by Congress in June, 1781, that they do nothing without the knowledge and consent of France. At that time, Congress had even withdrawn the requirement that the Mississippi River be the nation’s western boundary, ordering its commissioners to insist only upon independence. The negotiators’ coup enabled Vergennes, never really eager to keep fighting until Spain recovered Gibraltar from the British, to persuade Charles III’s ministers to settle instead for the acquisition of the island of Minorca in the Mediterranean Sea, as well as the two Floridas. The final treaties were signed at Paris on September 3, 1783, confirming the detailed British-American understanding of the previous November.
With the acceptance of the formal agreement and Congress’s ratification of the Treaty of Paris, the United States of America entered the community of nations. The new nation enjoyed the benefits of sovereignty, attaining boundaries recognized by international law whose transgression would constitute an act of war. It also assumed the obligations of sovereignty, as indicated by the debts to the British that the United States had to bear from the moment it officially existed.
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Bemis, Samuel Flagg. The Diplomacy of the American Revolution. Reprint. Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 1957. A pioneering assessment by one of the United States’ most distinguished diplomatic historians. -
Brecher, Frank W. Securing American Independence: John Jay and the French Alliance. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003. Examines the United States’ diplomatic efforts to end the Revolutionary War, focusing on the activities of John Jay and Charles Gravier de Vergennes. -
Burt, Alfred L. The United States, Great Britain, and British North America from the Revolution to the Establishment of Treaty After the War of 1812. Reprint. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968. A detailed account of the controversies and negotiations of the period. -
Cohen, Warren, ed. Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations. Vol. 1. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Discusses the 1782-1783 peace negotiations from a point of view highly critical of Jay’s role in the affair. -
Darling, Arthur B. Our Rising Empire, 1763-1803. Reprint. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1972. Contributes sound chapters on the peacemaking negotiations and the postwar period. -
Dull, Jonathan R. A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985. Places the Revolutionary War and subsequent peacemaking in the context of European power politics. -
Hoffman, Ronald, and Albert, Peter J., eds. Treaty and the Treatymakers: The Treaty of 1783. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986. Essays cover specific diplomatic issues of the period. -
Morris, Richard. The Treatymakers: The Great Powers and American Independence. Reprint. New York: Harper & Row, 1983. Widely respected as a comprehensive description and analysis of this subject. -
Schiff, Stacy. A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America. New York: Henry Holt, 2005. Examines the seven years Benjamin Franklin spent in Paris, securing an alliance with the French and eventually helping to negotiate the Treaty of Paris. Schiff depicts Franklin as an improvisational diplomat who created foreign policy as he went along.
American Revolutionary War
Second Continental Congress
Declaration of Independence
Franco-American Treaties
Ratification of the Articles of Confederation
Cornwallis Surrenders at Yorktown
Fort Stanwix Treaty
U.S. Constitution Is Adopted
Jay’s Treaty
Pinckney’s Treaty
John Adams; Charles III; Benjamin Franklin; George III; John Jay; Thomas Jefferson; Lord North; Charles Gravier de Vergennes.