<P> Britain's war against the Americans, French, and Spanish cost about £ 100 million . The Treasury borrowed 40% of the money that it needed . Heavy spending brought France to the verge of bankruptcy and revolution, while the British had relatively little difficulty financing their war, keeping their suppliers and soldiers paid, and hiring tens of thousands of German soldiers . </P> <P> Britain had a sophisticated financial system based on the wealth of thousands of landowners, who supported the government, together with banks and financiers in London . The British tax system collected about 12 percent of the GDP in taxes during the 1770s . </P> <P> In sharp contrast, Congress and the American states had no end of difficulty financing the war . In 1775, there was at most 12 million dollars in gold in the colonies, not nearly enough to cover current transactions, let alone finance a major war . The British made the situation much worse by imposing a tight blockade on every American port, which cut off almost all imports and exports . One partial solution was to rely on volunteer support from militiamen and donations from patriotic citizens . Another was to delay actual payments, pay soldiers and suppliers in depreciated currency, and promise that it would be made good after the war . Indeed, the soldiers and officers were given land grants in 1783 to cover the wages that they had earned but had not been paid during the war . Not until 1781 did the national government have a strong leader in financial matters, when Robert Morris was named Superintendent of Finance of the United States . </P> <P> Morris used a French loan in 1782 to set up the private Bank of North America to finance the war . Seeking greater efficiency, Morris reduced the civil list, saved money by using competitive bidding for contracts, tightened accounting procedures, and demanded the national government's full share of money and supplies from the confederated states . </P>

What was america called after the revolutionary war