America's First Ally

May 27, 2019
Desmarais (The Guide to the American Revolutionary War), editor-in-chief of the Brigade of the American Revolution’s journal, The Brigade Dispatch, provides a comprehensive and accessible guide to the vital role of France in that conflict. Desmarais, who has translated relevant primary sources from the French, starts his narrative in 1774, with Louis XVI’s appointment of a new French foreign minister, Charles Gravier, who was charged with reducing British power. That directive led to covert support for the colonists in the form of weapons and other military materiel, and then increasingly overt support. Even readers conversant with this aspect of the Revolutionary War are likely to learn something new, such as the extent to which French privateer attacks on British merchant vessels created significant indirect costs in the form of raised shipping rates and marine insurance premiums. Desmarais’s nonchronological organization—separating the chapter on French naval assistance from one about the troops on the ground France supplied—will not be optimal for everyone, and the level of detail may sometimes exceed the lay reader’s needs, but this is still a persuasive look at the significant role of foreign aid in the revolution’s success. Readers intrigued by the international dimensions of the Revolutionary War will find this a worthy volume.