When the United States was established, it had 13 states, derived from the 13 British colonies. They were all near the Atlantic Ocean and some of them were bigger than they are today because they occupied land westward, which became new states later on. It had a population of 2,400,000 people, most of them British, some German and Dutch, along with about 200,000 slaves mainly imported from Africa. Then, the country began to expand.
美国建立的时候有13个州，来源于英国建立的13个殖民地（因此星条旗有13个横条）。他们全都处于大西洋海岸。有一些州的面积比现在要大一点，这是因为他们建立之后往西占领了一些土地，后来被分成新的州。当时美国有240万人口，大多数是英国裔，也有一些德国和荷兰的移民，另外还有20万奴隶，基本上是从非洲买来的。这个不算很大的国家自建立之初就开始了扩张的步伐。
The first major event of expansion was the Louisiana Purchase.
第一件重大的事件是路易斯安那购地案。
France played an important role in the independence of the US. It also spent a large sum of money on the war. Soon, King Louis XVI of France found his national treasury empty and wanted to charge new taxes on the French people. The French, already suffering from inflation, revolted and dethroned the King, which led to the French Revolution. France became a republic but was threatened by all other European countries, along with economic crisis until the great general Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in 1799.
法国在美国独立期间起过相当大的作用。为了打仗，法国政府花掉了很大一笔钱。于是法王路易十六很快发现自己的国库没钱用了，就打算向法国人民开征新税。当时的法国已经陷入通胀，人民生活困难，于是爆发了法国大革命，推翻了国王，建立了共和国。法兰西共和国面临着欧洲各国的围攻，而且也没能解决经济危机的问题，最终将军拿破仑·波拿巴在1799年夺取了法国政权情况才有所改善。
1801年的拿破仑
The Napoleonic France gained enormous military triumph within Europe but the poor national financial problem hadn’t been solved. What’s more, Napoleon found it hard to control Louisiana, which was a vast French colony in North America with serious slave revolts.
拿破仑击败了欧洲所有的对手，却依然面临着国库空虚的问题。此外，他发现要控制万里之外的北美殖民地（路易斯安那）实在太困难了，路易斯安那面积太大，而且叛乱此起彼伏，让法国政府极为头疼。
中部的是路易斯安那，东边的是购地之前的美国
The American administration, under the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, negotiated with France and established an agreement in 1804: the US would purchase Louisiana for 50,000,000 francs and a cancelation of debts worth 18,000,000 francs. That comes to a total of 68,000,000 francs, or $237,000,000 in today’s money, and an average of 42 cents per acre. Through the purchase, the area of the US almost doubled and Napoleon could cut personnel and expense in overseas affairs and concentrate on Europe.
当时的美国政府（杰弗逊总统）积极地跟法国进行谈判，最终在1804年达成共识：美国将用5000万法郎的价格，加上减免法国1800万法郎的国债将路易斯安那全境购入，合共6800万法郎，换算成今天的货币就是2亿3700万美元，平均到每公顷只需要42美分。通过购地，美国国土面积几乎翻了一倍，而拿破仑也能抽走美洲的军队，裁剪海外开支，专心处理欧洲事务了。
杰弗逊总统
80 years later, France gave the US a present: agigantic sculpture called Liberty Enlightening the World or the Statue of Liberty. It remarked the friendship between the French and the Americans. Also it implied that France and the US were the only democratic republics in the world by then and that their paths of democracy were highly related.
80年后，法国给美国送了一份礼物：一个巨大的雕像，名叫“自由照耀世界”，现在我们把它叫做“自由神像”。它是法国人民跟美国人民友谊的象征，另外还有一个暗示：当时法国和美国是世界上唯一两个民主共和国家，而他们的民主制度的是互相连结在一起的。
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