(that's a joke BTW). As a member of the English elite and a resident of France it can be a bit hard to think what to say about the independence of the USA. This year I've remembered I have the perfect image. The statue above is of one of the non-Americans who helped make it happen: the Admiral de Grasse who defeated the Royal Navy's fleets trying to rescue Cornwallis at Yorktown. It might make an interesting alternate history to speculate about what could have happened had de Grasse failed to defeat the British Navy or (for that matter) had failed to break the British blockade of France to get across the Atlantic.
You may well think that I'm picking a strange person as hero here, and to be sure, he was not alone. But the Royal Navy was the key to the British empire and his defeat of it certainly encouraged the other European powers to cause further trouble and ensure that the Navy remained overstretched.
Blog Home : July 2006 : Permalink
