The Treaty of Paris formally ended the American Revolutionary War in 1783.
Representatives of Great Britain and the United States signed the treaty in Paris on September 3, 1783. Britain recognized the United States as free, sovereign, and independent states, giving international legal and diplomatic force to the independence proclaimed in 1776.
The American victory at Yorktown in 1781 helped make peace negotiations possible, but Yorktown did not itself end the war. Fighting and negotiations continued afterward. The treaty’s territorial provisions also defined a large western boundary for the new United States, extending to the Mississippi River.
The American negotiators were Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Jay, and Henry Laurens. The treaty was later ratified by the Congress of the Confederation in Annapolis on January 14, 1784. The year 1783 is therefore distinct from 1776, the year of the declaration, and 1781, the year of the decisive Yorktown campaign.