The French Ronde was originally a modern evolution of the gothic french handwriting from the 15-16th centuries. It became one of the official french hands when the French Parliament decided around 1633 that only 3 hands would be allowed to be taught and used for official documents. The Ronde was the formal one, it was never (meant to be) used as an every day handwriting style; in the 19th century it was mainly used for official documents like passports or birth certificates (for titles, mainly). They used a lot of weird variations for end of word / beginning of word letters, which makes some examples hard to read...
As David pointed out, the French models don't really look like the American models. All I can add to this observation is that the Italian copybooks from the 19th century show models of this "german-american" variation. German-looking styles became official in Italy back when Austria was ruling part of the country... My guess is that the style was inspired by the French models (there was this german-speaking region in France, which may have played some part is making the style more popular in Germany?), tweaked to fit the German aesthetics around the 1820-1850's and made simpler by getting rid of the "illegible" variations. I don't think that this was ever something else than a "ornamental" hand in Germany : they had Kurrent as their own handwriting style before they tweaked the French Ronde.
Soennecken is actually credited for inventing round-writing, and he seems to have published quite a few manuals on the subject in several languages. But I have trouble accepting this information, as he was only born in 1848 and the hand (or a very similar one) is already around in Italy in the 1830's...
He also manufactured a nib specifically to write this style.
Anyways, Soennecken's examples are wonderful
@Masgrimes, thanks for sharing !
