The Importance of Bourbon Naval Reconstruction to the Strategy of Choiseul after the Seven Years' War

Abstract

Trance is chiefly, if not solely, to be dreaded by us in the light of a maritime and commercial power ... by restoring to her all the valuable West-India islands, and by our concessions in the Newfoundland fishery, we had given to her the means of recovering her prodigious losses and of becoming once more formidable to us at sea.'1 This criticism by Pitt the Elder of the peace of Paris reflected a realistic appraisal of future French policy and of its dependence for success upon the condition and strength of the navies of both France and Spain, her ally in the Bourbon Family Compact. French policy towards England in the aftermath of the Seven Years' War proved to be an uncertain mixture of necessary pacificism and the desire for revenge. Only the knowledge that France would not be strong enough for several years after 1763 to fight Britain with any prospect of success tempered the resentment which the French king, Louis xv, and his principal minister, the duke of Choiseul, each felt towards France's traditional enemy. Nor was this animosity surprising at the end of a war which had decisively established Britain's maritime and colonial supremacy. The peace of Paris saw Britain's power and influence at its peak; her commercial and colonial strength unmatched, her prestige undimmed. This position of dominance, moreover, had been won almost completely at the expense of France. French losses in 1 763 reflected the extent of the defeat she had suffered in the Seven Years' War. By the peace of Paris, France was driven from the mainland of North America,