Anglo-French War: Having established an alliance with the United States, France invaded the Caribbean island of Dominica and captured its British fort.

The Anglo-French War, also known as the War of 1778 or the Bourbon War in Britain, was a military conflict fought between France and Great Britain, sometimes with their respective allies, between 1778 and 1783. As a consequence, Great Britain was forced to divert resources used to fight the American War of Independence to theatres in Europe, India, and the West Indies, and to rely on what turned out to be the chimera of Loyalist support in its North American operations. From 1778 to 1783, with or without their allies, France and Britain fought over dominance in the English Channel, the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean.

The Franco-American alliance was the 1778 military pact between the Kingdom of France and the United States during the American War of Independence. Formalized in the 1778 Treaty of Alliance, it was a military pact in which the French provided many supplies for the Americans in their conflict with France's rival Great Britain. The Netherlands and Spain later joined as allies of France; Britain had no European allies. The French alliance after the American forces defeated a British army at Saratoga in October 1777, demonstrating the viability of the American cause. Although France had played a significant role in the Americans' achievement of independence, the U.S. backed away from the alliance after 1793, when Great Britain and Revolutionary France again went to war. The U.S. declared itself neutral. Relations between France and the United States worsened when the U.S. became closer to Britain, signing the Jay Treaty of 1795, leading to an undeclared Quasi War. The alliance was entirely defunct by 1794 and formally ended in 1800.

The invasion of Dominica was a successful French invasion of the island of Dominica in the British West Indies, during the American Revolutionary War. The action took place before British authorities in the Caribbean were aware that France had entered the war as an ally of the United States of America. The French governor in the West Indies, François Claude Amour, marquis de Bouillé, was notified on 17 August that France was at war, and organized the invasion, infiltrating spies to rally sympathetic French-speaking Dominican support.