On this day in 1784, the United States Congress of the Confederation ratified the Treaty of Paris. Copies were sent back to Europe for ratification by the other parties involved, the first reaching France in March 1784. British ratification occurred on April 9, 1784, and the ratified versions were exchanged in Paris on May 12, 1784. It was not for some time, though, that the Americans in the countryside received the news because of the lack of speedy communication. The Treaty of Paris, signed in Paris by representatives of King George III of Great Britain and representatives of the United States of America on September 3, 1783, ended the American Revolutionary War. This treaty, along with the separate peace treaties between Great Britain and the nations that supported the American cause: France, Spain and the Dutch Republic, are known collectively as the Peace of Paris. Its territorial provisions were exceedingly generous to the United States in terms of enlarged boundaries. Peace negotiations began in April of 1782 , and continued through the summer. Representing the United States were Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Henry Laurens, and John Adams. David Hartley and Richard Oswald represented Great Britain. The treaty was signed at the Hotel dYork (presently 56 Rue Jacob) in Paris on September 3, 1783 by Adams, Franklin, Jay, and Hartley. Franklin was almost successful in getting Britain to cede the Province of Quebec (todays eastern Canada) to the United States because he hoped to control all of North America. The British at first agreed, then rejected the proposal. On the same day, Great Britain also signed separate agreements with France and Spain, and (provisionally) with the Netherlands. In the treaty with Spain, the territories of East and West Florida were ceded to Spain (without a clear northern boundary, resulting in a territorial dispute resolved by the Treaty of Madrid in 1795), as was the island of Minorca, while the Bahama Islands, Grenada, and Montserrat, captured by the French and Spanish, were returned to Britain. The treaty with France was mostly about exchanges of captured territory (Frances only net gains were the island of Tobago, and Senegal in Africa), but also reinforced earlier treaties, guaranteeing fishing rights off Newfoundland. Dutch possessions in the East Indies, captured in 1781, were returned by Britain to the Netherlands in exchange for trading privileges in the Dutch East Indies, by a treaty which was not finalized until 1784. The picture is of the last page of the Treaty of Paris.
Posted on: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 10:32:19 +0000
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