The French-American alliance was essential to American independence, yet many of the people who made it work have disappeared from the story.

My research seeks to recover these individuals and, through them, to understand the alliance from the inside: how trust was built, how disagreements were overcome, how military decisions were made, and how relationships developed between people separated by language, culture, and political traditions.

Following these stories has led me to previously overlooked and long-lost archival collections on both sides of the Atlantic. Among them are the military papers of Baron de Vioménil, Rochambeau’s second-in-command, which I identified in the industrial archives of Le Creusot in France.

Together with the Chastellux papers and many other archival collections, these sources reveal an alliance that extended far beyond the battlefield. It was also a story of cultural exchange, intellectual curiosity, scientific collaboration, political debate, and personal relationships.

By returning to the original sources—and making previously inaccessible collections available to other researchers—I hope to recover a more complex and human story of the alliance that helped secure American independence.