French Finances and the American War, 1777-1783

Abstract

A subject of continuing interest among historians of the Atlantic revolutions of the last quarter of the eighteenth century has been the impact of the American Revolution on the French Revolution. Opinions have varied, but on one subject everyone seems agreed: it was France's participation in the war of the American Revolution which led inexorably to her own bankruptcy some six years later. If it was financial difficulty which forced the king to convene the StatesGeneral of 1789, then the American war must bear a heavy responsibility for the French Revolution. Some French historians have therefore bitterly regretted the intervention of France in the American Revolution. Marcel Marion wrote in 1914, Due to the wretched condition of French finances, a long war led France to the abyss.''1 An American historian has written that if Louis XVI had followed Turgot's advice in 1776 he might not have lost his head in 1793.2 It is well known that the controller-general of finances had strongly advised the king to refrain from intervention in the American affair because he feared the catastrophic consequences it would have on the royal finances. Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, baron de l'Aulne, the great reform minister of Louis XVI, continues to be held in high esteem by historians. A different fate has been that of his successor, Jacques Necker, who managed the royal finances from 1776 to 1781 and whose stature among historians has diminished precipitately in recent years. A citizen of Geneva who refused to become a naturalized subject of the king of France and to change his religion, Necker was not admitted to the king's council and could not influence foreign policy. It is said that he was simply a financial wizard whose talents the royal government was willing to use in order to raise money for the war: another John Law, as it were, who had ingratiated himself with Jean-Frederic Phelipeaux, comte de Maurepas, the all-powerful