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France played a key role in the American Revolutionary War (American War of Independence; 1775–1783). After the Americans captured a British army, France recognized and allied itself with them in 1778, declared war on Britain, provided money and matériel to arm the new republic, and sent an army to the United States. French intervention made a decisive contribution to the U.S. victory in the war. Motivated by a long-term rivalry with Britain and by revenge for its territorial losses during the French and Indian War, France began secretly sending supplies in 1775. Spain and the Netherlands joined France, making it a global war in which the British had no major allies. France obtained its revenge, but materially it gained little and was left with over 1 billion livres in debts that seriously weakened the government on the eve of the French Revolution. Benjamin Franklin served as the American ambassador to France from 1776 to 1785. He met with many leading diplomats, aristocrats, intellectuals, scientists and financiers. Franklin's image and writings caught the French imagination – there were many images of him sold on the market – and he became the cultural icon of the archetypal new American, and even a hero for aspirations for a new order inside France. The French goal was to weaken Britain and to exact revenge for the defeat in the French and Indian War. After the American capture of the British invasion army at Saratoga in 1777, and after the French navy had been built up, France was ready. In 1778 France recognized the United States of America as a sovereign nation, signed a military alliance, went to war with Britain, built coalitions with the Netherlands and Spain that kept Britain without a significant ally of its own, provided the Americans with grants, arms and loans, sent a combat army to serve under George Washington, and sent a navy that prevented the second British army from escaping from Yorktown in 1781. In all, the French spent about 1.3 billion livres (in modern currency, approximately thirteen billion U.S. dollars) to support the Americans directly, not including the money it spent fighting Britain on land and sea outside the United States. ==American origins of the conflict== (詳細はSeven Years' War in 1763, France lost its vast holdings in North America and wanted revenge. Meanwhile, the American colonists and the British government began to fight over whether Parliament in London, or the colonial assemblies had primary responsibility for taxation. The ideological conflict escalated into open warfare in 1775, at which point the American patriots took control of each of the 13 colonies away from Royal officials. The British refused to consider independence. The French, which had been rebuilding their Navy and other forces, now saw an opportunity to seriously weaken its perennial enemy. 〔Hoffman, Ronald, and Peter J. Albert, eds. ''Diplomacy and Revolution: The Franco-American Alliance of 1778'' (United States Capitol Historical Society, 1981)〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「France in the American Revolutionary War」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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