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Friendship might sound like a weird thing to bring up after a long and bitter war, but it's part of the goal of a treaty. Ending a war turns an enemy into an ally.
Or, at least it does in theory. Some of the rhetoric is so over the top, it almost sounds like they're trolling each other.
While the Treaty of Paris might not have transformed both countries into steadfast friends, the next couple hundred years did. Ultimately, the lesson stuck.
A sincere desire for friendship prompted the British generosity to the United States, and it paid dividends, producing a centuries-long alliance in the 20th and 21st centuries.
The British were seething from defeat and wanted no friendship with the U.S., but knew that antagonizing them would push them into the welcoming arms of their enemy, France.
People hate politics. It's up there with Mondays and that white crud you get at the corner of your mouth when you're really thirsty on the Things We All Despise list. The problem is, politics are important. Politics is just a word for how separate groups of people get along.
And unfortunately, people tend to get along…badly.
Usually, these groups define themselves by some convenient label, whether it's national origin, political party, religion, whether or not they like the Muppets, or nearly anything you can think of. The Treaty of Paris didn't create a division, but it acknowledged that one was there. It also allowed the sides to build on that, something Britain was keen to do.
The crown used the Treaty of Paris as an attempt to stop a larger international coalition rising against it in the form of France, Spain, the Netherlands, and the new United States.
The crown used the Treaty of Paris as an attempt to make the United States recognize, once it inevitably failed, that it would be welcomed back into the fold.
The Patriots liked to frame their cause in the stark terms of freedom vs. tyranny. Why? It sounded good for recruiting. Seriously. What would you rather join, a group that was fighting for freedom against a tyrannical king? Or a couple guys who'd rather the king kinda left them alone?
Whether or not it was actual tyranny is up for debate. Tyranny tends to be in the mind of the beholder. So while someone like Jefferson might look at the Stamp Act and see tyranny…and one of the many people Jefferson owned as slaves might look at Jefferson and think the same thing.
The Treaty of Paris settled the matter by asserting the freedom of the United States from Great Britain, and pretty much any other king out there. That was a pretty new kind of freedom. Unless you were a time-traveling ancient Greek—then it was cool and familiar.
The Treaty of Paris threw off the shackles of tyranny and allowed the citizens of the United States the freedom to choose their leaders.
The Treaty of Paris only succeeded in replacing a single tyrant in the person of King George, with a legion of them in the form of multiple layers of government.
One country recognizing another doesn't mean that two countries are at a party and realize they totally know each other from that war thing. It's one country openly acknowledging that another country is a real, legitimate country—not some place where a couple of weirdos who made a flag out of tinfoil live.
For the United States, this was what the Revolutionary War was all about. Before this, the U.S. wasn't a country. It was a colony under the authority of the British Empire. Recognition by other countries came first, and then the Treaty of Paris forced Britain to do it. This speaks to legitimacy, and the treaty was what granted it.
While the Treaty of Paris made the United States a real country in the eyes of the Europeans, it had little to no effect on the Native American powers.
The United States, as a rebel power, needed legitimacy from Great Britain to truly be a country. In this one case, the Treaty of Paris was vital to the new country's standing.
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