The French financial- and military contributions to the American Revolution were motivated almost entirely by a desire to contain the British and exact revenge for the loss of French North America. Financially that ended up being a very bad move for the (royal) French government, but don't imagine that they were inspired by fraternal feelings toward the American revolutionaries.
The american contribution to their own wealth was to not pay the debt they contracted to Louis XVI when France became a Republic (and they were right to do it for legal reason).
Le baron de Beaumarchais (famous writer and weapon smuggler) that lobbied the french monarchy for helping the US revolution was clearly doing it for the sake of freeing the people from monarchy (he was one of the philosoph supporting the strange idea that merit matters more than birth rights).
You should really read more. Especially 'le mariage de Figaro'
> The american contribution to their own wealth was to not pay the debt they contracted to Louis XVI when France became a Republic (and they were right to do it for legal reason).
According to a U.S. State Department history [1]: "In 1795, the United States was finally able to settle its debts with the French Government with the help of James Swan, an American banker who privately assumed French debts at a slightly higher interest rate. Swan then resold these debts at a profit on domestic U.S. markets. The United States no longer owed money to foreign governments, although it continued to owe money to private investors both in the United States and in Europe."
Granted, 1795 was a bit too late to help Louis XVI, who had lost his head two years before. Still, it was only 12 years after the peace treaty with Britain -- not too terrible for a brand-new nation, I'd say. And in any case, it'd be unconventional (to say the least) to try to blame the Americans for the French royal government's mismanagement of its financial affairs.
---
> Le baron de Beaumarchais (famous writer and weapon smuggler) that lobbied the french monarchy for helping the US revolution was clearly doing it for the sake of freeing the people from monarchy (he was one of the philosoph supporting the strange idea that merit matters more than birth rights).
Nations aren't monoliths; their governments act in response to pressures from all sorts of different people who have all sorts of different opinions and motives.
(Example: When the U.S. entered WWII, the triggering event was the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor. But for months before that, and especially after the Nazi German invasion of the USSR in June 1941, a significant number of Americans had wanted the U.S. to enter the European war --- some to help the British, and some because they were Communists or sympathizers who wanted an immediate second front in Europe to take the pressure off the Soviet Union.)
In the rough French revolution context is basically the same as today:
* huge debts contracted by gvt;
* unfair repartition of the fiscality (the 1% wealthiest don't pay in proportion to their income);
* producers (the 10% wealthiest) are not able to produce anymore because fiscality is to high;
The convocation of "tiers etats" that triggered the revolution was about asking how to make the repartition of fiscality more fair.
the 1% wealthier said we don't care we don't pay and you can't change the system anyway because we make the rules and they "mouhahaha"ed
The remaining said, okay, are you losing your head (saracasm and irony)? and they said to the other europeans 1% (germans, brits, dutch, spanish)... Oh btw, we are not a kingdom anymore. As a result, we dont have anymore debts. Go fuck yourselves
The banks were pissed off and they said: WUT! Debts are to be honored, if people begin to think that money don't rule the world the world is doomed.
Thus the coalitions against France, battles (Valmy), Napoleon tricking Italia in Republic and then betraying them so that the bankers got another ennemy ...
I forgot the part where producers were also asking for the state to ensure a 'fair competition' based on merit and not birth.
Now, takes Forbes top 500 fortunes of the world and tell me how much people are not xth generation dynasty kids.
I love Bill Gates he has a lot of merit, one of which is being well borned.
We do have a meritocratic system, but this system is biased because he is mainly accessible through birth.
This is the definition of a society based on casts. We are regressing in the name of a so called "liberalism" that looks like the "communism" of Lenin : an implementation that contradict the purpose.
Our political systems are wrong implementations of good ideas. How can we repeatedly fail that much collectively?
And? Unless you're going to try to make the point that post-WWII American investment in Europe was done purely out of the goodness of the post-WWII American heart, I'm not sure where you are going with this.
> Unless you're going to try to make the point that post-WWII American investment in Europe was done purely out of the goodness of the post-WWII American heart, I'm not sure where you are going with this.
Not purely --- I would imagine that certainly American leaders had future markets in mind --- but there was definitely a large component of altruism, quite possibly more so than with the French support of the American revolutionaries in the late 1770s and early 1780s.
In the post-WWII era, the U.S. had nukes, as well as two broad oceans as moats. After the Japanese surrender we demobilized as fast as we could, in response to overwhelming domestic political pressure to "bring the boys home."
It might well have been feasible for us to have largely retreated to our own borders and leave the western Europeans to their fates at the hands of the Soviets. Instead, we spent billions, perhaps even trillions, to maintain forces in Europe to deter Soviet aggression and to try to help western Europe recover from the devastation of the war. (We offered Marshall-Plan aid to the Soviets and their vassal states as well, but the Soviets prevented those countries from accepting [1].)
Of course self-interest was part of the U.S. motivation. But there also was altruism, and generosity.
Other than in an abstract sense, what does the American Revolution have to do with the Postwar Reconstruction, some 170 years later? And how does that mute or counter the statement I made?
