Age of Revolutions · SEP 1783
Could Britain have won the American Revolutionary War?
The seminar question: “Britain had a powerful navy, great resources and a professional army. Could it ever have won?”
The American Revolutionary War began at Lexington and Concord on 19 April 1775. The rebels needed only to keep an army and coalition alive; Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga in 1777 brought France in openly, and French troops and de Grasse’s fleet enabled the Yorktown trap in 1781. The 1783 peace recognized a new republic.
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British troops left Boston on 19 April 1775 to seize colonial military stores. At Lexington and Concord they encountered militia, and on the return march they suffered heavy losses. The fighting began a war in which the opponents had different things to accomplish. Britain could take a city, but the rebels could continue fighting elsewhere. Washington had to keep the Continental Army from being destroyed in a decisive battle; as long as it survived, Congress could sustain the struggle and foreign governments could see a rebellion worth supporting.
The short answer
- The Atlantic and the cost of reconquest. An army fighting 3,000 miles from Britain depended on men and supplies sent by sail; an order and its answer could take three months. Distance raised costs and slowed decisions, but it became a serious burden because resistance continued. The rebels needed to keep their army and movement alive until the expense of reconquest weakened London’s will and credit.
- The French decision. Vergennes arranged covert arms for the rebels from 1776, and most of the gunpowder at Saratoga was French. France wanted revenge for its defeat in 1763, yet open war exposed its own resources and possessions. The alliance of February 1778 brought a French fleet and army into the struggle and stretched British resources across a global war. France’s estimated expenditure of 1.3 billion livres would add to the debt behind its own crisis.
- Resistance beyond the garrison. Colonial armed communities and self-governing institutions had a century of experience. Britain captured New York, Philadelphia and Charleston, but its garrisons could not exercise the same power everywhere beyond them. Assemblies, committees and militias could sustain or rebuild local resistance. A captured city gave Britain a foothold; it did not by itself restore rule over the surrounding population.
THE TURNING POINT
Saratoga, 17 October 1777. The British plan called for three columns to converge on Albany. They did not meet: Howe went to Philadelphia, while Burgoyne advanced south and became isolated. On 17 October 1777 he surrendered 5,800 men at Saratoga. French ministers considering an alliance needed reason to believe that the rebellion could endure. The surrender supplied evidence, and within four months France signed the alliance. Britain now faced a wider coalition.
What it changed
Written constitutions as examples. American state constitutions, followed by the federal Constitution of 1787, offered a working precedent for government under written, ratified and amendable rules. Revolutionaries from Paris to Caracas could take up that example, whether they adopted its provisions or argued against them.
Slavery and the new republic. Independence left about half a million people enslaved. The Constitution counted enslaved people as three-fifths for representation and taxation and protected the slave trade for twenty years. Northern states began gradual abolition. Tens of thousands of Black Loyalists left with the British, many having looked to them for freedom. The change of government did not give freedom to everyone living under it.
A peace made over Native lands. Many Native nations had fought with Britain to resist settler expansion. The Treaty of Paris assigned their lands to the republic on paper without consulting them. Native peoples continued to occupy and defend those lands, and frontier wars followed as settlers and the new state sought control.
The cost of French victory. France gained revenge against Britain, but paid an estimated 1.3 billion livres, raised through borrowing. Interest consumed about half the royal budget. The burden of victory helped bring the monarchy to the Estates-General.
The full answer, argued
Yes. Washington’s army nearly dissolved in 1776, and Britain could have defeated it. Even then, Britain would have faced the task of establishing durable rule over self-governing communities along a vast coast. Occupying cities did not remove the political networks that sustained resistance. After France entered, British ships and troops were also needed to defend valuable positions elsewhere. Together, Atlantic distance, local resistance and the global coalition made reconquest too costly for Britain to accept.
An interesting fact
Perhaps 11,000 Americans died aboard British prison hulks in New York’s Wallabout Bay, although estimates run higher. That exceeds the roughly 6,800 killed in all the war’s battles combined. Survivors called the worst ship, the Jersey, “Hell afloat.” For decades bones washed out of the Brooklyn shoreline; a crypt at Fort Greene gathered the dead in 1908.
This is the study layer of American Revolutionary War, chapter 2 of The Age of Revolutions, 1775–1848; the full index of the atlas is here.
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