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.
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 2015 All rights reserved.
