I have a lot to learn. Therefore, with due humility, I ask: how hard
did the British try to win the American Revolutionary War?
It's a research topic that intrigues me. I'm using the question to
guide my reading. I'm careful to remind myself, often, that I don't know the
answer.
I think I know enough to indicate the validity of the question. Britain
had substantial economic engagement with the North American colonies in the
latter part of the 18th century. The British West Indies—the
Caribbean "sugar islands"—also were an important component of the
British Atlantic colonial world. Britain had additional commitments in Florida,
as well as military outposts, trading posts and other dependencies in Ireland,
the Mediterranean, India, Africa, Central America, the Bahamas, the Bermudas,
Nova Scotia, Quebec and Hudson's Bay. Britain was intensely engaged in
diplomacy and threatening entanglements with France, Spain and other European
powers. Britain was an economic power, not a military titan.
King George and the British government did not have unlimited military
resources. Army and naval forces were allocated to the rebellious American
colonies, just as they were to the West Indies and other areas of vital
interest. French and Spanish forces continually threatened the British
Caribbean islands, an economic bastion of the British monarchy. There were not
enough British ships and troops to establish compelling military superiority in
every arena of British interest.
Ultimately, British admirals could not prevent a localized French naval
superiority in the Chesapeake Bay that forced Cornwallis to surrender his
under-sized army to Washington and Rochambeau at Yorktown in October, 1781.
Did the British government send enough troops and ships to North
America to get the job done when the rebellion broke out? Was winning the war a
pre-eminent priority for King George and his ministers? Doubtless the British
wanted to win. How hard did they try?
I'm not looking for a simple answer. I'm interested, first, in
understanding the meaningful frames of reference for considering the question.
Sources:
Bowler, R. Arthur. Logistics
and the Failure of the British Army in American, 1775-1783. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1975.
Corwin, Edward S. French Policy and the American Alliance of
1778. 1916. Reprint, Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1962.
Duffy, Michael. Soldiers, Sugar and Seapower: The British
Expeditions to the West Indies and the War Against Revolutionary France.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.
Gipson, Lawrence Henry. The Triumphant Empire: The Empire Beyond the
Storm, 1770-1776, vol. 13 of The British Empire Before The American
Revolution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1967.
O'Shaughnessy, Andrew Jackson. An Empire Divided: The American Revolution
and the British Caribbean. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2000.
Seton-Watson, Robert William.
Britain In Europe: 1789-1914, A Survey of
Foreign Policy. 1937. Reprint, Cambridge: The Cambridge University Press,
1955.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2013 All rights reserved.
