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Reviews of Books
Britain and France at the Birth of America: The European Powers and
the Peace Negotiations of 1782–1783. By
ANDREW STOCKLEY
. (Exeter, Eng.: University of Exeter Press, 2001. Pp, xvi, 272. $75.00.)
Reviewed by Lawrence S. Kaplan, Georgetown University
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Andrew Stockley's monograph on the peace negotiations of 1782–1783 demonstrates that old-fashioned diplomatic history remains relevant to the twenty-first century. The influence of social history and other subdisciplines has encouraged many diplomatic historians to look to sociological, psychological, and other factors to explain relations between nations. The author, a senior lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, would have none of this. His book is essentially a straightforward account of diplomatic correspondence as revealed in the British and French archives. |
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Stockley has offered an important reminder about the American War of Independence in asserting that America was not the center of European concern in a war that involved Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands as well as the American colonies. The author's thesis is not unique; he relies on Hamish Scott's argument of a dozen years ago, which emphasizes that Britain's and France's foreign policies in the years after 1763 minimized the Anglo-American confrontation.1 Stockley successfully shows that the statecraft of Shelburne and Vergennes in the peace negotiations of 1782 and 1783 involved issues more important to Britain and France than the fate of the American colonies. |
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How Britain and France managed to frame a treaty in 1782 that provided for American Independence without loss of face by either European power is the main theme of the book. There are two major protagonists—William Petty, earl of Shelburne, and Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes—and one particular antagonist, Charles James Fox. Principals with their own objectives in mediating a peace treaty included Empress Catherine II of Russia and Emperor Joseph II of Austria. Vergennes emerges in this account as a far-sighted statesman, who saw in the American cause an opportunity to redress the balance of power that had been distorted by Britain's successes in the Seven Years' War. He won over a cautious king and reluctant finance ministers with his conviction that the time was right in 1778 to strike at Britain. His larger purpose was to force a chastened Britain to join with France in frustrating a potential Austrian-Russian effort to dismantle the Ottoman empire. In his search for rapprochement with Britain, he found a willing partner in Shelburne. |
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Both statesmen accepted the independence as a by-product of their collaboration, even though their expectations differed. Vergennes anticipated that a grateful America would serve France's economic interests as well as elevate its international standing. Shelburne envisioned that American gratitude for a generous peace settlement would encourage close economic ties between the former colonies and the former mother country. Of the two men, Shelburne's was the more complex character. He appears as a visionary, vague on details and imprecise in his thinking, who frequently earned the distrust of friends and enemies by conveying misleading information to both. But he genuinely sought a peace with France and embraced the free trade objectives of Vergennes. He found in the French minister an ally whose concern for a mutually satisfactory peace prepared both men for concessions to achieve it. |
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