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This page exists largely to help clarify some of the issues raised in the article Treaty of Paris (1783) which discusses only the Anglo-American treaty, while referring obliquely to "separate agreements" with other nations. Among other things, details of the Anglo-Spanish treaty (e.g. full boundary description for the Belize River area, but none for Florida; and no mention at all of arrangements for navigation along the Spanish-controlled lower reaches of the Mississippi) are important for understanding the subsequent relationship between the United States and its southern neighbour. David Trochos ( talk) 18:42, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
From the article: "This treaty later ends to be a very big failure to the nation, letting the British getting a lot of more wealth which then the the War of 1812 will happen.[9][5]" What could this mean? Fconaway ( talk) 05:24, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
The map shows Spain controlling Jamaica which is not true in 1783. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.69.182.4 ( talk) 19:28, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
The map shows Vermont as separate from British Canada or the newly independent United States, but why this is is not mentioned at all in the article. Indeed the word Vermont doesn't appear even once. 12.111.91.2 ( talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:44, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
Check the History section on Vermont's page; they were independent for a few more years before joining the union, and were a seperate political entity until 1788, whereas this article refers to 1783, when they were still independent. I'll be adding the info under the map; remove it if deemed unfit. 99.199.116.200 ( talk) 16:38, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
The first two sentences of the first paragraph of the introduction now run:
The second sentence presents two problems of style.
The first is in the use of dashes to set off the clauses in which the names of the treaties are given, which is itself predicated on the unjustified withholding of those names.
The second is in readability. The sentence contains one subordinate clause that is broken by a parenthetical appositive clause introduced by a dash and then closed by a dash that introduces a coordinate clause that is itself closed by a dash before another appositive clause; become the syntactical parallelism is broken, the sentence is rather hard to read.
Just for the sake of illustration, I imagine a more readable sentence would run:
I say "for the sake of illustration" because I wish to treat other problems in another post, but I can't know whether only one or several editors will try to eliminate the different problems, so I wish to be absolutely clear on what they are. Wordwright ( talk) 00:13, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
The first paragraph in the introductory section now runs:
Say what? There are two sets of events: one set occurs in Paris and Versailles in 1783; another occurs notionally in 1783, but really only in 1784—why are they jointly known as the Peace of Paris? What have the first four nations got to do with one another? It seems that the only peace arrived at was the end of the war between GB and the former colonies; what has the Fourth Anglo-Dutch war, which apparently did not end in 1783, got to do with that?
The fundamental problem is that this paragraph presumes the ordinary reader, no matter what their country, to know that, although originally the ARW was a conflict between GB and her colonies, eventually, for reasons that had little to do with American independence, France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic joined in to support the Americans. This presumption—not an assumption mind you, which differs logically from a presumption—is not justified.
Perhaps the initial paragraph might run:
I do not know whether all in my version is correct, but I think that in it I have included many of the things one needs to make sure the ordinary reader is properly oriented and, if he reads no further, has a sound nutshell background understanding. Wordwright ( talk) 00:37, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
The second paragraph of the introductory section now runs:
Although it is clear that the second paragraph is meant to summarize the states of affairs that issued from the Peace of Paris, it needs a transitional topic statement to that effect.
As for the specifics themselves, they are presented in a jumbled order, and are phrased in ways utterly at odds with the nature of a treaty. In particular, the tone is not neutral: "mixed-to-poor results," "got its revenge," and "mixed result" are colloquialisms that introduce an unseemly note of subjective pathos, and so offend against the linguistic register and the analytical dignity of the subject.
Since the point of a treaty is to negotiate the terms of peace, one should summarize those terms, and reserve for the end a neutral report of the terms that, according to the historical consensus, figured in each party's war aims and in each party's evaluations of the treaty.
If one is going to refer to Britain's relation to the colonies at all, one should say that Britain lost her colonies, for strictly speaking the term the British does not refer to the King, whereas it is the King who personifies Britain, and it is to the British Crown that the colonies belonged.
There is really no such entity as the "first" British Empire, but even if there were, the treaty could not have contained any mention of its demise; the only relevant report should concern whatever territorial stipulations figured in the treaty. On similar grounds, all the talk of France's getting revenge, financial losses, credit, and historians' opinions about events after the ToP of 1783 is irrelevant—an introductory section is not a place even to sketch the aftermath of treaties.
Because the second paragraph just does heap statements higgledy-piggledy about matters without relating them clearly to the terms of the treaties, it thumps to a halt. The end sentence should be a crisp statement about the role that any of the treaties played in the matter of future relations between the signatories; if the historical consensus states that any particular treaty did play a significant role in the fate of a nation, then, again, a crisp neutral-sounding statement (that is, one that does not use slang to indicate affect) should spell the matter out. Wordwright ( talk) 01:13, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
![]() | A fact from Peace of Paris (1783) appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the
Did you know column on 11 January 2008, and was viewed approximately 1,605 times (
disclaimer) (
check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
| ![]() |
![]() | A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on September 3, 2016. |
![]() | This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This page exists largely to help clarify some of the issues raised in the article Treaty of Paris (1783) which discusses only the Anglo-American treaty, while referring obliquely to "separate agreements" with other nations. Among other things, details of the Anglo-Spanish treaty (e.g. full boundary description for the Belize River area, but none for Florida; and no mention at all of arrangements for navigation along the Spanish-controlled lower reaches of the Mississippi) are important for understanding the subsequent relationship between the United States and its southern neighbour. David Trochos ( talk) 18:42, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
From the article: "This treaty later ends to be a very big failure to the nation, letting the British getting a lot of more wealth which then the the War of 1812 will happen.[9][5]" What could this mean? Fconaway ( talk) 05:24, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
The map shows Spain controlling Jamaica which is not true in 1783. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.69.182.4 ( talk) 19:28, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
The map shows Vermont as separate from British Canada or the newly independent United States, but why this is is not mentioned at all in the article. Indeed the word Vermont doesn't appear even once. 12.111.91.2 ( talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:44, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
Check the History section on Vermont's page; they were independent for a few more years before joining the union, and were a seperate political entity until 1788, whereas this article refers to 1783, when they were still independent. I'll be adding the info under the map; remove it if deemed unfit. 99.199.116.200 ( talk) 16:38, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
The first two sentences of the first paragraph of the introduction now run:
The second sentence presents two problems of style.
The first is in the use of dashes to set off the clauses in which the names of the treaties are given, which is itself predicated on the unjustified withholding of those names.
The second is in readability. The sentence contains one subordinate clause that is broken by a parenthetical appositive clause introduced by a dash and then closed by a dash that introduces a coordinate clause that is itself closed by a dash before another appositive clause; become the syntactical parallelism is broken, the sentence is rather hard to read.
Just for the sake of illustration, I imagine a more readable sentence would run:
I say "for the sake of illustration" because I wish to treat other problems in another post, but I can't know whether only one or several editors will try to eliminate the different problems, so I wish to be absolutely clear on what they are. Wordwright ( talk) 00:13, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
The first paragraph in the introductory section now runs:
Say what? There are two sets of events: one set occurs in Paris and Versailles in 1783; another occurs notionally in 1783, but really only in 1784—why are they jointly known as the Peace of Paris? What have the first four nations got to do with one another? It seems that the only peace arrived at was the end of the war between GB and the former colonies; what has the Fourth Anglo-Dutch war, which apparently did not end in 1783, got to do with that?
The fundamental problem is that this paragraph presumes the ordinary reader, no matter what their country, to know that, although originally the ARW was a conflict between GB and her colonies, eventually, for reasons that had little to do with American independence, France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic joined in to support the Americans. This presumption—not an assumption mind you, which differs logically from a presumption—is not justified.
Perhaps the initial paragraph might run:
I do not know whether all in my version is correct, but I think that in it I have included many of the things one needs to make sure the ordinary reader is properly oriented and, if he reads no further, has a sound nutshell background understanding. Wordwright ( talk) 00:37, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
The second paragraph of the introductory section now runs:
Although it is clear that the second paragraph is meant to summarize the states of affairs that issued from the Peace of Paris, it needs a transitional topic statement to that effect.
As for the specifics themselves, they are presented in a jumbled order, and are phrased in ways utterly at odds with the nature of a treaty. In particular, the tone is not neutral: "mixed-to-poor results," "got its revenge," and "mixed result" are colloquialisms that introduce an unseemly note of subjective pathos, and so offend against the linguistic register and the analytical dignity of the subject.
Since the point of a treaty is to negotiate the terms of peace, one should summarize those terms, and reserve for the end a neutral report of the terms that, according to the historical consensus, figured in each party's war aims and in each party's evaluations of the treaty.
If one is going to refer to Britain's relation to the colonies at all, one should say that Britain lost her colonies, for strictly speaking the term the British does not refer to the King, whereas it is the King who personifies Britain, and it is to the British Crown that the colonies belonged.
There is really no such entity as the "first" British Empire, but even if there were, the treaty could not have contained any mention of its demise; the only relevant report should concern whatever territorial stipulations figured in the treaty. On similar grounds, all the talk of France's getting revenge, financial losses, credit, and historians' opinions about events after the ToP of 1783 is irrelevant—an introductory section is not a place even to sketch the aftermath of treaties.
Because the second paragraph just does heap statements higgledy-piggledy about matters without relating them clearly to the terms of the treaties, it thumps to a halt. The end sentence should be a crisp statement about the role that any of the treaties played in the matter of future relations between the signatories; if the historical consensus states that any particular treaty did play a significant role in the fate of a nation, then, again, a crisp neutral-sounding statement (that is, one that does not use slang to indicate affect) should spell the matter out. Wordwright ( talk) 01:13, 7 February 2020 (UTC)