For some purposes, it might be useful to distinguish between wars of independence and revolutions that, by intent or result, replace one government with another but don't change national borders. That one puts, for example, the American and Indian wars of independence in the first category, and the French, Chinese, and Mexican revolutions in the second. The lines are fuzzy, of course--but if that distinction is useful, the U.S. isn't like France, it's like India.