Should France have gotten involved in the US Revolutionary War?

[BlueMTexpat]

10. Exactly.

If one has any doubt, one has only to glance at the history of England and France since 1066 to see nearly continuous war. Once the New World was discovered, things really heated up. The "superpowers" of Europe rushed to allot New World's territory among themselves. With Portugal's power waning earlier and Spain's power much diminished after the defeat of the Armada, Britain and France literally found themselves to be the last ones standing.

France saw assisting the American colonies with their revolution as a way to shore up their influence in the New World which had taken very bad hits - and losses of territory - after the Battle for Quebec. Ironically, with France's own treasury depleted as a result of its intervention and with the French Revolution one of the outcomes, it was Napoleon Bonaparte who sold the Louisiana Purchase to the US in the early 1800s to finance his wars throughout continental Europe and the Middle East, thus relinquishing the most important French holdings without any battle at all. It was also Napoleon Bonaparte who added Syrian territory, among others, to his French Empire, which didn't last long.

Those additions have certainly had their adverse reverberations today.