British Involvement In The Revolutionary War

Ingrid Ortiz
Mrs. Buice
APUSH- Period 3
30 September 2014
Intro
With all of the circumstances weighed, one can see that the outcome of the American Revolutionary War of 1776 inevitably tilted toward victory for the colonists. The British brought an experienced Army to bear on the Colonists; however, fighting a war across the Atlantic Ocean required supplying the army by way of the sea, a great logistical disadvantage. The Colonists, by contrast were fighting in their own backyards, and had a well-coordinated system of supply routes that made it easy to support their smaller and constantly moving army, no matter where they fought. The sheer size of the Colonial geography made it impossible for the British army to occupy and control. Although
the British were able to take control of certain key ports, which strengthened their supply lines, this did little to win control of the Colonies since the majority of the population lived in the countryside, out of reach of the British army. Being an untrained army turned out to be an advantage for the Colonists as the "hit and run guerrilla tactics" learned from the indigenous Indians took the British by surprise and turned out to be effective in demoralizing the enemy. The Colonies were able to enlist France, Spain, and Amsterdam as allies, each eager to see the British fail for their own reasons. However, the main advantage that the Colonists had was their motivation, they were fighting on their own land to protect their home and family, and preserve their very way of life. This wave of patriotism rallied the nation and inspired the following: “There are no people on earth in whom a spirit of enthusiastic zeal is so readily kindled, and burns so remarkably, as Americans”
― David McCullough, 1776

Logistics
Before the start of the Revolutionary War, the British military operated one of the most sophisticated logical support organizations among nations to support its global colonial activities. Even so, England was logistically unprepared to support a war across the ocean in America. The 3000-mile distance complicated the system by a significant margin, revealing shortcomings that were eventually remedied, but not until they contributed to undermining the British military effort during the Revolutionary war. Three major bureaucracies, The Treasury Department, the Navy Board, and the Ordinance Board, shared responsibility for supplying the British Army in the colonies. The Treasury department was responsible for providing food. Under direction of the Treasury Department, the Commissary General was directly responsible for organizing the supply of food to the British Military in the Colonies. Food and other items not shipped from England had to be procured or foraged locally. This process was rife with corruption on the British side; suppliers and government representatives were dishonest and worked the system to their own benefit. This collusion resulted in a reduction in the quality and quantity of goods arriving in the Colonies, increasing the dependency on local procurement and foraging. Before the war broke out, the British procured a significant amount of food locally in the America by trading with colonists. The British military also acquired fresh wild meat by local foraging. Once the war broke out, the ability to procure local food at a reasonable price became almost impossible and foraging became dangerous. This made the shipments from England even more important, and increased the negative impact of government corruption.
Of paramount importance to the delivery of these critical goods is the accurate reporting of the demand for the goods. The Commissary General, Daniel Chamier, being both corrupt and incompetent, continuously reported the demand for rations inaccurately. In addition to counting the fighting men inaccurately, he neglected to include officers, wives, children, refugees, and others who were entitled to these rations. The reporting was regularly short by as many as 4000 rations. Additionally, the effect of corrupt suppliers resulted in the delivery of goods that were regularly short of the agreed upon weight. Barrels of flour or pork could be anywhere from five to 10 percent lighter than promised.
On top of this, transportation was another source of profiteering and corruption; each violation reduced the amount of food delivered to the military. Aside from the corruption, most of the food supplies sent from England, packed poorly for the rugged voyage, experienced damaged in shipment. These voyages regularly incurred great losses. In one convoy of 1775, of seven thousand barrels of flour shipped to the colonies, fully 5000 of them arrived damaged and unusable. This resulted in 12,000 soldiers having bread for some 47 days, instead of the intended 5 and 1/2 months. In October of 1775, in an effort to overcome all of the aforementioned issues with procurement, corruption, and transportation, the Treasury department undertook a remarkable effort to procure enough supplies to see the British forces through the coming winter so that they would be well fed and rested for a Spring campaign. The department contracted a private firm to deliver enough fresh food to fill 36 ships. The produce was loaded into special packages designed to protect it for the sea voyage. All of this work was for nothing, as one of the worst storms in many years hit the convoy. Only 13 ships made it to Boston, and little of the cargo survived.
Geography – population dispersion and ports
Regardless of logistics, the sheer size of the colonial territories made it impossible for the British to occupy and control the country.
Even if the British had worked out solutions for their supply lines, to conquer a country requires an occupying force to control each territory once won. The British had insufficient forces to provide such an occupying force. The British army rarely ventured far from the main port cities, most of which they controlled. When the British attempted military actions far from the safety of an occupied port, the results were often in favor of the colonists. The decentralized nature of the colonial government turned out to be an inadvertent advantage: being without a central point of control, the colonies did not have a single capital to capture from which to pressure the country into surrender. The colonial population, dispersed in the countryside, were largely unaffected by the British capture of key port cities. The geographic disadvantage for the British also deprived them of a resource that could possibly have tilted the outcome of the war if properly exploited, a 50,000-man strong loyalist movement within the Colonies. The loyalists, dispersed among the rest of the population, are targets for harassment and are tarred and feathered, or otherwise neutralized by the Colonists. This severely weakens their effectiveness by the time the British made an effort to exploit them in
1780.
Tactics
When the British did encounter George Washington’s forces, Washington’s tactics would keep them off guard. If the British enjoyed the advantage, Washington’s army would employ the tactic of “strategic retreat” to fight another day. When the advantage was to the Americans, they would mount a full campaign, often capturing large numbers of British. Between any large-scale encounters, the Colonial army constantly pressed small-scale Indian style attacks, demoralizing the British forces. Before long, it was apparent that the British would never enjoy a victory against the American army in a conventional battlefield encounter, as Washington had mastered the use of “strategic retreat”, instead pressing battles only on his own terms. Washington knew that in order to win the war, the Americans had only to defend themselves against the British, they did not have to travel across the ocean to defeat Britain. The British, on the other hand, had to maintain the projection of power across 3000 miles of ocean, a feat that they could not continue indefinitely. By preserving his fighting force, Washington kept the pressure on Britain until they reached the inevitable tipping point at which they were no longer willing to endure the expense of this force projection, and would pull out leaving the Americans with their independence. This tipping point in the war came after the battle of Saratoga.
This colonial victory was a turning point in the revolution. In an effort to stave off the French recognition of the United States as an independent nation, British Prime Minister, Lord North, called on parliament to repeal immediately the Tea Act (a trigger for the start of the war) and the Massachusetts Government Act. He then immediately dispatched The Carlisle Peace Commission to negotiate a settlement with the United States. The commission had broad power to negotiate a settlement with the United States that included self-governance of the type first proposed by Thomas Pownal (the basis for the eventual British Commonwealth Status). The commission failed partly because the US had already declared independence from Great Britain. The commission’s authority fell short of the ability to recognize the newly declared independent nation status of the United States of America, thus its mission failed. The French then entered the war by recognizing The United States of America as an independent nation, undercutting the British offer for self-rule. Soon after, Spain entered the war in 1779, followed by Holland in 1782, each eager to see the British fail. The result was the defeat of the British Military and the birth of the independent United States of
America.