American Reveolution

Text-only Version: Click HERE to see this thread with all of the graphics, features, and links.



Jonathan Mark
Well what do you people think of the American Revolution?

Grand_Moff_Gav
Well, when the Brits left you lot decided to expand west, something the Brits forbade and you decimated the Natives...but then can we talk? Look what we did to the Aborigines!

Jonathan Mark
Damn... I spelled the title wrong.

Alliance
ahhh...manifest destiny.

BuzzKiller
The topic of this thread is the american revolution. Manifest destiny came after the war. yes the want to go west played a role in the lead up to the war. anyway, the americans should never have won this conflict. The brits outgunned, outmanned and out everythinged. the brits underestimated the resolve and tenacity of the colonists. the brits lost the war, the americans did not win it.

Ushgarak
Hah! Do people really still see it like that?

The British were under resourced, under financed, badly led and there wasn't really any interest in the war, still less in paying for it. There was no mighty, invulnerable war machine that was beaten- and furthermore, you can't possibly win wars like that by number of muskets, and we knew that full well from the way we ruled India. You win over enough the local rulers or you are out, and as soon as more local bigwigs were interested in going solo than in staying in, then not ten times as many troops would have made any difference. Truth is, the Americans couldn't realistically have done anything other than win.

After all, the Revolution was more Civil War than a war against the Brits.

Janus Marius
Originally posted by Ushgarak
Hah! Do people really still see it like that?

The British were under resourced, under financed, badly led and there wasn't really any interest in the war, still less in paying for it. There was no mighty, invulnerable war machine that was beaten- and furthermore, you can't possibly win wars like that by number of muskets, and we knew that full well from the way we ruled India. You win over enough the local rulers or you are out, and as soon as more local bigwigs were interested in going solo than in staying in, then not ten times as many troops would have made any difference. Truth is, the Americans couldn't realistically have done anything other than win.

After all, the Revolution was more Civil War than a war against the Brits.

Interesting view on the topic.

Alliance
Originally posted by BuzzKiller
The topic of this thread is the american revolution. Manifest destiny came after the war. yes the want to go west played a role in the lead up to the war.

The official movemetn came later, yes. But I was referring to the general roots of the movement (that you mentioned)and i was reffering to Gav's comment, I wasn't trying to derial the thread. Sorry if you thought that.

Darth Macabre
Originally posted by Ushgarak
Hah! Do people really still see it like that?

The British were under resourced, under financed, badly led and there wasn't really any interest in the war, still less in paying for it. There was no mighty, invulnerable war machine that was beaten- and furthermore, you can't possibly win wars like that by number of muskets, and we knew that full well from the way we ruled India. You win over enough the local rulers or you are out, and as soon as more local bigwigs were interested in going solo than in staying in, then not ten times as many troops would have made any difference. Truth is, the Americans couldn't realistically have done anything other than win.

After all, the Revolution was more Civil War than a war against the Brits.


Hmm... That's an interesting way to put it... So basically British losing the "Revolution" was inevitable, and they knew it?

Alliance
I wouldn't say it was inevitable, but I do like the idea of it as a Civil War, especially since on the Norhtern colonies wanted independance.

Ushgarak
I think there might have been the idea at first that if we sent out some troops, more people would prove loyalist than Republican.

But when that very quickly became not the case, popularity and confidence in an armed resolution plummeted. It was a very unpopular war indeed and there was no serious hope of victory. Well, no hope of victory due to British intervention anyway, looking at it as a Civil War.

Tangible God
I only really started getting into the American Revolution after I saw The Patriot.

BuzzKiller
Originally posted by Ushgarak
Hah! Do people really still see it like that?

The British were under resourced, under financed, badly led and there wasn't really any interest in the war, still less in paying for it. There was no mighty, invulnerable war machine that was beaten- and furthermore, you can't possibly win wars like that by number of muskets, and we knew that full well from the way we ruled India. You win over enough the local rulers or you are out, and as soon as more local bigwigs were interested in going solo than in staying in, then not ten times as many troops would have made any difference. Truth is, the Americans couldn't realistically have done anything other than win.

After all, the Revolution was more Civil War than a war against the Brits.

I meant that had the British not lost the war the Americans would not have won the war. The British lost fo all the reasons you named, that I will not debate. However, the Brits could have defeated the Americans if they had decided to simply put enough boots on the ground. The Brits should have done a lot better, especially when you think about how well they did with all of those problems considered.

Ushgarak
No, obviously you didn't read my post properly.

The British could not have won- even if they HAD enough boots on the ground to put there at all, which conjures up a nonsensical idea that tbe British Empire ever had a large army- but more importantly, it wasn't for them to win or lose anyway. It was for the factions in the Colonies themselves to fight and win.

H. S. 6
Originally posted by Ushgarak
Hah! Do people really still see it like that?

The British were under resourced, under financed, badly led and there wasn't really any interest in the war, still less in paying for it. There was no mighty, invulnerable war machine that was beaten- and furthermore, you can't possibly win wars like that by number of muskets, and we knew that full well from the way we ruled India. You win over enough the local rulers or you are out, and as soon as more local bigwigs were interested in going solo than in staying in, then not ten times as many troops would have made any difference. Truth is, the Americans couldn't realistically have done anything other than win.

After all, the Revolution was more Civil War than a war against the Brits.

Exactly. Not to mention having to ship the soldiers over the ocean. Lots of money for the British. erm

Grand_Moff_Gav
Originally posted by H. S. 6
Exactly. Not to mention having to ship the soldiers over the ocean. Lots of money for the British. erm

And the Brits didn't really want to spend it. America wasn't their greatest concern.

Darth Macabre
Originally posted by H. S. 6
Exactly. Not to mention having to ship the soldiers over the ocean. Lots of money for the British. erm

They were already in debt as it was as well....If I remember correctly.

Tangible God
The Seven Year War was the reason for the taxation on the colonies which was the principal motivation behind the revolution.

Capt_Fantastic
Never forget that the American colonists who most verbally and physically supported and fought the war were hardly interested in the rule of government. They were interested in not being taxed out of existence, and more importantly buisness, by the british crown. Don't forget that the Magna Carta was already old news by this point. It's a concept that has hardly changed in the last 300 years. The American Revolution is often touted as a group of like minded people who sought freedom from oppression. That couldn't be further from the truth.

cking
The British had everything they needed to beat the colonist in almost every category. they had the best navy in the world and their soldiers were better trained when it came to line formations. The british brought enough troops to beat the colonists alone but they didn't have enough to beat both America and France. America had alot of decisive battles that proved crucial even if they have won more battles than the British doesn't mean they would win the war. The British didn't have to bring a huge army to slaughter the colonists, but they brought enough to chip away at their troops just enough to weaken them even through the u.s was winning the battle. The same thing happened to the civil war the south won more battles than the north, but the north outnumbered them by alot and even through both the south and colonists were winning battle after battle, it would come to a point in the war were the numbers will hurt both of them completely and they would lose one huge battle and might prove to the end of the war much like Gettysburg. statistically there was no way the colonists would have won without another country interference. much like ths south fighting the north, but the colonists held their own until the french came with their navy and held a blockade at Yorktown, Virginia.

Ushgarak
That's a very oudated viewpoint, all the more so for the fact that it was the British who won more.

No, as I say above, this was a conflict of internal issues, and an early example of how winning hearts and minds is far more important than what you manage on the field.

cking
well better to have a viewpoint than have none at all. yes

Quiero Mota
Originally posted by Ushgarak
Hah! Do people really still see it like that?

The British were under resourced, under financed, badly led and there wasn't really any interest in the war, still less in paying for it. There was no mighty, invulnerable war machine that was beaten- and furthermore, you can't possibly win wars like that by number of muskets, and we knew that full well from the way we ruled India. You win over enough the local rulers or you are out, and as soon as more local bigwigs were interested in going solo than in staying in, then not ten times as many troops would have made any difference. Truth is, the Americans couldn't realistically have done anything other than win.

After all, the Revolution was more Civil War than a war against the Brits.

I suppose form the Brits' point of view it can be called a "Civil War".

Ushgarak
It was a war mainly between internal factions inside the Colonies; it has little to do with being a British perspective. We intervened on one side and the French on the other, but the mechanisms were internal.

Darth Kreiger
Guerilla Warfare for the win!

Dr. Zaius
Originally posted by Ushgarak
It was a war mainly between internal factions inside the Colonies; it has little to do with being a British perspective. We intervened on one side and the French on the other, but the mechanisms were internal.

Uh...what? The Continental Army faced British troops all the way. I don't recall there being in skirmishes between rival colonial armies. There were certainly plenty of Royalist sympathizers, but they more or less laid low and lent behind-the-scenes support to the occupying British forces. Not much else.

I think you're right in some of your earlier posts about citing relative British indifference to the war. It was definitely not a hugely popular affair across the pond. But the forces that were here, were here to win. It certainly wasn't a forgone conclusion that the colonists would emerge victorious. In fact, the war looked lost for Washington by December of the first year of fighting, when the subscription terms for his men were running out, and his army had been booted from New York and New Jersey. It wasn't until the battle of Valley Forge and Trenton, that he regained some psychological momentum, and not until Saratoga that any of the rest of the world thought we had a chance--this is when we picked up the French.

All in all, Washington's adoption of the Fabian strategy is what saved our behinds. Continuously harass the enemy without letting him engage you in any one decisive battle. The object is to make the invader tire out and give up...or get careless. Washington's ability to keep the Continental army intact as a viable threat, plus our diplomats' eventual success in securing financial backing and military support from France were the tipping points.

Mithrandir
I must agree with Dr. Zaius on the grounds of factuality; the American Revolution was neither inevitable nor was it an internal struggle between patriots and loyalists. Another misconception that has been repeated in this forum is that the British were indifferent to the war with America, which is at best partly true. Indeed, the contemporary population of Britain at that time was opposed to the war but the implications of defeat were enormous. If the British lost their American holdings, they would also be losing one of their chief sources of raw materials as well as one of their most lucrative sources of trade. Consequently, they deemed it fully necessary to aquatically invade their dissenting colonies with a troop size of around 40,000 led by General Howe.
To further enunciate the sheer predicament the Continental Army faced, their comprisal of militias each only had a subscription of 6 months meaning that Washington would constantly be yielding his veterans to a newer batch of militias who were devoid of training. On top of this daunting setback, they were drastically under-supplied to the extent that they had to remove lead from the tops of citizens' houses to make sufficient bullets. Perpetually untrained and far less supplied than their British opponents, chances of victory seemed even scanter due to the fact that they were outnumbered around four to one and that around of a third their army was disabled by a rampant outbreak of small pox.
Victory was rarely on the Continentals mind. Rather the two possibilities that were predominantly afforded to them in the beginning stages of the war were defeat or survival. Suffering successive losses at Manhattan, Long Island and Monmouth, the war seemed that would indeed end soon and the common prewar misconception of a quick victory against the British was slowly abandoned for the aforementioned realistic outcomes: defeat or survival.

Mithrandir

Mithrandir
Yorktown was a classic hammer and anvil strategy. It worked so well because, for once, the French navy, which had elusively attacked British ports in the Carribean for most of the duration of the war, had finally arrived and with it the loans needed to sustain the war. Yorktown finally provided enough doubt in British creditors to cease the proliferation of the war, mostly on economic grounds.

Mithlond
No internal struggle? Then how come 1/3 of the population of the US fled to the Carribean or Canada during/after the war? There were no loyalist armies, as those loyalists enlisted for the British. They may have worn a red coat, but they were still loyalists nonetheless. I believe this is what Ush meant. Of course there were struggles between patriots and loyalists, as well as different native tribes which fought on both sides.

At the time, Canada, the Carribean and the 'US' were all part of the 'American' Colonies. Trade still continued with the other two, and indeed, the Carribean proved highly lucrative for sugar, etc while Canada provided wood and furs. The US itself was not considered overtly lucrative, hence one of the reasons the British imposed an expansion ban on the colonies, which was one of the reasons for the revolution.

To look at the war as the US and France vs the Brits is a tad simplistic.

Quiero Mota
Originally posted by Dr. Zaius
Uh...what? The Continental Army faced British troops all the way. I don't recall there being in skirmishes between rival colonial armies. There were certainly plenty of Royalist sympathizers, but they more or less laid low and lent behind-the-scenes support to the occupying British forces. Not much else.

I think you're right in some of your earlier posts about citing relative British indifference to the war. It was definitely not a hugely popular affair across the pond. But the forces that were here, were here to win. It certainly wasn't a forgone conclusion that the colonists would emerge victorious. In fact, the war looked lost for Washington by December of the first year of fighting, when the subscription terms for his men were running out, and his army had been booted from New York and New Jersey. It wasn't until the battle of Valley Forge and Trenton, that he regained some psychological momentum, and not until Saratoga that any of the rest of the world thought we had a chance--this is when we picked up the French.

All in all, Washington's adoption of the Fabian strategy is what saved our behinds. Continuously harass the enemy without letting him engage you in any one decisive battle. The object is to make the invader tire out and give up...or get careless. Washington's ability to keep the Continental army intact as a viable threat, plus our diplomats' eventual success in securing financial backing and military support from France were the tipping points.

thumb up

Mithrandir

Darth Kreiger
France did little to help the Wareffort Militarily, only good support from them was Money/Arms. American Guerilla Warfare Ultimately won the War, the British had to keep sending over Troops/Arms, while the Americans supplied themselves mostly by Raiding British Supply Lines, and propaganda for supporters.

The British Weakened while the Americans grew Stronger.

Don't say the English Commanders sucked, they were very capable Generals, maybe not a Rommel, or a Patton, but still very good, just their type of Warfare was weak

Text-only Version: Click HERE to see this thread with all of the graphics, features, and links.