How the Spanish Monarchy Facilitated the Independence of the United States Republic: the Role of Bernardo de Gálvez in American Independence

Abstract

At the time of the American Revolutionary War, the Spanish monarchy in the person of the governor of Spanish Louisiana, Bernardo de Gálvez, played a very important role in the defeat of British forces in the Mississippi Valley and in West and East Florida. Through the clandestine provision of arms, powder and war materials to the American rebels and their forts and the subsequent military conquest of Baton Rouge, Mobile and Pensacola from the British by forces under his command, de Gálvez ended English power in this vast area, bolstered the American cause and returning all of Florida to Spain.