[Sidenote: Results to France]
Had it not been for the disastrous battle of Saints, France might have dictated very favorable terms in the treaty of Versailles, [Footnote: In 1786 a supplementary Anglo-French treaty restored regular commerce between the two nations, and recognized that Great Britain had no right to seize traders flying a neutral flag, except for contraband of war, i.e., guns, powder, and provisions of war.] but, as it was, she merely regained Tobago in the West Indies and Senegal in Africa, which she had lost in 1763. [Footnote: See above, p. 317.] The equipment of navies and armies had exhausted the finances of the French government, and was largely responsible for the bankruptcy which was soon to occasion the fall of absolutism in France. Moreover, French "radicals," having seen the Americans revolt against a king, were, themselves, the more ready to enter upon a revolution.
[Sidenote: Results to Spain]
Better than France fared Spain. By the treaty of Versailles she received the island of Minorca and the territory of Florida, which then included the southern portions of what later became the American states of Alabama and Mississippi. [Footnote: The Louisiana territory, which had come into Spanish possession in 1763, was re-ceded to France in 1800 and sold by France to the United States in 1803. Eighteen years later (1821) all of Florida was formally transferred to the United States. And see below, p. 532.]
[Sidenote: Settlement between Great Britain and Holland, 1784]
Holland, the least important participant in the war, was not a party to the treaty of Versailles, but was left to conclude a separate peace with Great Britain in the following year (1784). The Dutch not only lost some of their East Indian possessions, [Footnote: Including stations on the Malabar and Coromandel coasts of India.] but, what was more essential, they were forced to throw open to British merchants the valuable trade of the Malay Archipelago.
THE REFORMATION OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE
[Sidenote: New Conciliatory Colonial Policy]
The War of American Independence not only had cost Great Britain the thirteen colonies, hitherto the most important, [Footnote: The thirteen colonies were not actually then so profitable, however, as the fertile West Indies, nor did they fit in so well with the mercantilist theory of Colonialism.] oldest, and strongest of her possessions, and likewise Senegal, Florida, Tobago, and Minorca, but it had necessitated a terrible expenditure of men, money, and ships. More bitter than the disastrous results of the war, however, was the reflection that possibly all might have been avoided by a policy of conciliation and concession. Still it was not too late to learn, and in its treatment of the remaining colonies, the British government showed that the lesson had not been lost.
[Sidenote: Quebec Act, 1774]
[Sidenote: Board of Control in India, 1784]
[Sidenote: Separate Parliament for Ireland, 1782]