Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[Eddie Teach]

I guess Raz doesn't like furs.

[Berkut]

France had three or four times the population of the Great Britain in 1770.

Sorry, you are not going to convince me that GB was able to finance a war with the Americans on their own without falling apart, and France could not just HELP the Americans, and the difference was just that GB had a larger empire.

Bullshit.

Great Britain was an Empire in 1776.  France was just a country with a couple of colonies.

France had already lost Northern Canada (Hudson Bay) and Acadia in 1713. They lost everything else in America in 1759.  Can't remember the date they lost India.

It's a world wide empire, not just the country.  The British were still collecting taxes and duties from most of their American colonies for part of the war.  France had zero revenue from the non existent New France and zero revenue from its non existent Indian colonies.

I'm sorry, but as long as you insist on comparing country to country instead of empires, your analysis will be flawed.

Its a pretty simple comparison.

France is four times the size of GB, and was a continental super power. 

The fact that they could not help out the Americans without putting themselves into even more crippling debt is a indicator that the problem that eventually destroyed their government was not the debt, but the system behind it.

It's not complicated, nor is the point dependent on them having a global empire. GB was not able to finance a massive war because they raked in so much cash from their empire - they were able to do so because they had a modern, working financial system that they were able to leverage to finance their wars. France did not.

France had no more of a global empire in 1790 then they did in 1780, and they managed to engage in a series of truly massive wars that dwarfed the contribution they made to the American Revolution. Clearly the issue was not France's lack of a global empire to fund them.

[Razgovory]

Those little sugar islands were worth more than the whole of Canada.

From a certain point of view. 

Well, from the point of a view of the French.

[Syt]

[viper37]

Those little sugar islands were worth more than the whole of Canada.

From a certain point of view. 

Well, from the point of a view of the French.

Not all of them.

Louis XV and his ministers thought they could reconquer Canada in another war, at about the time the American War Independence War occurred, and in the short time, the sugar islands were providing more money to the crown's treasury.  

[viper37]

France is four times the size of GB, and was a continental super power.

The fact that they could not help out the Americans without putting themselves into even more crippling debt is a indicator that the problem that eventually destroyed their government was not the debt, but the system behind it.

It's not complicated, nor is the point dependent on them having a global empire. GB was not able to finance a massive war because they raked in so much cash from their empire - they were able to do so because they had a modern, working financial system that they were able to leverage to finance their wars. France did not.

France had no more of a global empire in 1790 then they did in 1780, and they managed to engage in a series of truly massive wars that dwarfed the contribution they made to the American Revolution. Clearly the issue was not France's lack of a global empire to fund them.

Empire vs Empire, Great Britain was much larger and had access to much more resources than France in 1776.

France did not engage in a series of truly massive wars in 1790, war came on them, and it was mostly a continental war.  France did not have to wage a war in India and in America at the same time they had to fight Frederick the Great in Europe with unreliable allies (Russia that decided to leave the war just as Prussia was getting crushed and Spain did not join until much later in the war).

As much as I will laud the courage and tenacity of Canadians, there were too few of them and not enough Indians willing to fight for all the war's duration to make a difference in North America against the combined forces for the armed colonists and the British regulars.

By the 1790s, when the Revolutionary wars happened, many things happened:
a) recruitment in the army was open to anyone and advancement was to the merit.  It gave the army better junior/mid range officers
b) prior to the Revolution, Nobles were in charge of maintaining and training the army, among other things, in exchange for the privileges.  Following Versailles' construction and most nobles moving there, there was a lot of neglect into that aspect, and French troops, at one time among the elite of European troops consistently dropped lower in quality until they were slightly below average in reload times during the Austrian wars and Seven Years wars.  Once the State took things over, the troops were regularly drilled, albeit still often underequipped at the beginning.
c) during the Austrian War of Succession, they were allied to Frederick the Great.  During the 7 Years War, they fought against him.  Don't under estimate Prussia's power at the time.  Prussia in 1759-1763 wasn't the same country as 1790-1815.  Waging a winning war were your forage on enemy lands isn't the same as waging a defensive war where the enemy forages on your lands.  Ask Ukrainians if you don't believe me.

France got into massive debt during the 7 years war (they were already massively indebted but could manage), just like England, but England got away by winning a bunch of colonies.  Colonies means you have a market where to export your finish goods, you have new cheap lands for your colonists, you have access to cheap raw natural resources (Canadian forests were used instead of the Baltic by Great Britain to supply the wood needed for its navy) , including slaves for its other colonies.  France had no more of that.  

They couldn't rely on Canada to supply them wood and furs for trade.  They couldn't rely on their African colonies to provide cheap slaves for their sugar plantations.  They couldn't rely on their Indian colonies for the commerce of luxury products that were in high demand in Europe, be it spices, jewelry, textiles, other Asian products, etc.,

They may have had more population, but they had much less source of revenues.    I'm pretty sure if you look at Liechtenstein and Luxembourg today, you'll find they have less population than Belgium but have a higher GDP.

[Razgovory]

Some people think that the only thing wrong with January 6th was that it failed.

[Josquius]

Pissing on the purpose of the thread, yet a reshare from social media which is great.

[Syt]

but ... wouldn't you also consider the number of surveys send/attempted, and include them (or control for how many people normally respond/don't respond to surveys and include that in the analysis)?

[Josquius]

but ... wouldn't you also consider the number of surveys send/attempted, and include them (or control for how many people normally respond/don't respond to surveys and include that in the analysis)?

I'd like to think so- only 25% of the country actually voted for brexit and all that. And I do think there should be more recognition for not caring enough to give an opinion as an opinion in its own right... But I've not seen any literature addressing this. Maybe that can be my PHD?

[Darth Wagtaros]

Some people think that the only thing wrong with January 6th was that it failed.

Yeah, while at the same time jerking each other off with "ANTIFA DID IT IF IT WAS BAD!"

[Jacob]

Dude should've been painting flames on the Bitcoin logo on his shirt instead.

[Syt]

(Context for last picture: from an 80s(?) news clip. Man in foreground was convicted for molesting a child. Guy in background is kid's father who waited for him here and then shot him.)

[The Minsky Moment]

France is four times the size of GB,

Maddison project database has France at 21 million pop in 1700 and 31 million in 1820
For Great Britain it is 8.5 million in 1700 and 21 million in 1820

Britain's pop has a big surge in the early industrial revolution; still I'd say 2X is more likely 4X in 1776.

[Berkut]

Any way you slice it, if GB can afford to engage in the American War without breaking their society, then France should be able to help the Americans out in that war without breaking theirs, if the problem was simply financial. Surely the cost for GB to fight the American War was an order of magnitude greater then France's cost to simply help out, right. Although its not like there is any apple to apples way to compare, is there?

Of course, it was NOT simply financial. France was broken, and trying to help out the Americans is not what broke them.

Again, from 1792 through 1815 they engaged in a series of truly massive wars that dwarfed the expenditures they made for the American Revolution just a decade or so earlier. Now, it's not like those wars weren't bankrupting as well, but the sheer scale difference, IMO, makes it pretty clear that the cost of the American war was entirely sustainable by France had they had a political system that was able to leverage their nations resources more in line with what GB was able to accomplish in that timeframe, much less how they were able to leverage their resources just a decade later themselves.