Treaty of Paris
Britain recognised the independence of the United States in September 1783 on terms far better than the Americans had any right to expect. The war had ended militarily at Yorktown in October 1781, and North's government fell the following March; the negotiation was conducted with a British ministry that wanted out and that calculated that a generous settlement would detach the new republic from France commercially and politically. The American commissioners — Franklin, Adams and Jay — were instructed by Congress to do nothing without French agreement and negotiated separately anyway, having concluded that Vergennes intended to trade their western claims to satisfy Spain. The terms gave the United States everything east of the Mississippi from the Great Lakes to Florida, which was roughly twice the settled territory, along with fishing rights off Newfoundland. Britain retained Canada, returned Florida to Spain, and gave Senegal and Tobago to France. Two provisions were left deliberately vague and caused trouble for thirty years: the recommendation that states restore confiscated loyalist property, which they ignored, and the obligation on both sides regarding debts and the western forts, which Britain garrisoned until 1796. The Indigenous nations who had fought on both sides were not mentioned at all, and their land was disposed of over their heads. Some 60,000 loyalists left for Canada, Britain and the Caribbean, taking about 15,000 enslaved people with them. Franklin refused to be painted with the British delegation, which is why the group portrait is unfinished. The generosity had a commercial motive that worked. Britain was the new republic's largest trading partner again within a decade, and the French alliance that had won the war lapsed into the quarrel that produced an undeclared naval conflict in 1798.
- Year: 1783 CE
- Category: Diplomatic
