Documenting United States History

TopIC II | entangling alliances 109

long-term causes for French and

British-American hostilities

proximate causes for French and

British-American hostilities

Long-term cause 1: French and British colo-

nial wars (eighteenth century)

Proximate cause 1: Jay’s Treaty (1795)

Documentary evidence: Doc. 3.5, Thomas

Oliver, Letter to Queen Anne, 1708

Documentary evidence: Doc. 4.13, Thomas

Jefferson, Letter to James Monroe, 1795

Long-term cause 2: Proximate cause 2:

Documentary evidence: Documentary evidence:

Long-term cause 3: Proximate cause 3:

Documentary evidence: Documentary evidence:

steP 2 Now you’re ready to write a thesis that accepts, refutes, or modifies the statement

in the prompt. You will prove your thesis with a historical argument that analyzes the causes

of British-American and French hostilities, both long-term and proximate.

An example might look like this:

British-American and French relations were mixed before 1778, with both sides

sometimes working together and sometimes fighting with each other. After 1778,

France and the United States formed a firm alliance that was later destroyed by

Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans who were competing with each other for

political power.

This thesis rejects the prompt’s claim that the origins of British-American and French hostil-

ities lay in the early eighteenth century. Instead, it claims that the relations between these

two groups were mixed and became hostile during the 1790s because of domestic Ameri-

can politics.

steP 3 After you’ve written your own thesis, revisit the table that you brainstormed above.

Turn your brainstorm into a historical argument by organizing the information into two main

claims for the causes of the hostilities between the French and British-Americans.

For the sample thesis above, a historical argument table might look like this:

historical Argument

long-term causes of hostility (claims) proximate causes of hostility (claims)

Claim: The parties engaged in off and on

hostilities and were sometimes at peace and

sometimes at war.

Evidence: French and British colonial wars

(eighteenth century)

Claim: The parties experienced a steady

decline in relations from the end of the

Revolutionary War through the split in Wash-

ington’s administration caused by compe-

tition between Federalists and Jeffersonian

Republicans.

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