African Americans

African Americans—slave and free—served on both sides during the war. The British recruited slaves belonging to Patriot masters and promised freedom to those who served by act of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation. Because of manpower shortages, George Washington lifted the ban on black enlistment in the Continental Army in January 1776. Small all-black units were formed in Rhode Island and Massachusetts; many slaves were promised freedom for serving. Some of the men promised freedom were sent back to their masters, after the war was over, out of political convenience. Another all-black unit came from Saint-Domingue with French colonial forces. At least 5,000 black soldiers fought for the Revolutionary cause.^[176][177]
Tens of thousands of slaves escaped during the war and joined British lines; others simply moved off in the chaos. For instance, in South Carolina, nearly 25,000 slaves (30% of the enslaved population) fled, migrated or died during the disruption of the war.^[178] This greatly disrupted plantation production during and after the war. When they withdrew their forces from Savannah and Charleston, the British also evacuated 10,000 slaves belonging to Loyalists.^[179] Altogether, the British evacuated nearly 20,000 blacks at the end of the war. More than 3,000 of them were freedmen and most of these were resettled in Nova Scotia; other blacks were sold in the West Indies.^[180][181]

Native Americans

Most Native Americans east of the Mississippi River were affected by the war, and many communities were divided over the question of how to respond to the conflict. Though a few tribes were on friendly terms with the Americans, most Native Americans opposed the United States as a potential threat to their territory. Approximately 13,000 Native Americans fought on the British side, with the largest group coming from the Iroquois tribes, who fielded around 1,500 men.^[182] The powerful Iroquois Confederacy was shattered as a result of the conflict; although the Confederacy did not take sides, the Seneca, Onondaga, and Cayuga nations sided with the British. Members of the Mohawk fought on both sides. Many Tuscarora and Oneida sided with the colonists. The Continental Army sent the Sullivan Expedition on raids throughout New York to cripple the Iroquois tribes that had sided with the British. Both during and after the war friction between the Mohawk leaders Joseph Louis Cook and Joseph Brant, who had sided with the Americans and the British respectively, further exacerbated the split.

A watercolor painting depicting a variety of Continental Army soldiers.

Early in July 1776, a major action in the fledgling conflict occurred when the Cherokee allies of Britain attacked the western frontier areas of North Carolina. Their defeat resulted in a splintering of the Cherokee towns and people, and was directly responsible for the rise of the Chickamauga Cherokee, bitter enemies of the Colonials who carried on a frontier war for decades following the end of hostilities with Britain.^[183]
Creek and Seminole allies of Britain fought against Americans in Georgia and South Carolina. In 1778, a force of 800 Creeks destroyed American settlements along the Broad River in Georgia. Creek warriors also joined Thomas Brown's raids into South Carolina and assisted Britain during the Siege of Savannah.^[184] Many Native Americans were involved in the fighting between Britain and Spain on the Gulf Coast and up the Mississippi River—mostly on the British side. Thousands of Creeks, Chickasaws, and Choctaws fought in or near major battles such as the Battle of Fort Charlotte, the Battle of Mobile, and the Siege of Pensacola.^[185]

Race and class

Pybus (2005) estimates that about 20,000 slaves defected to or were captured by the British, of whom about 8,000 died from disease or wounds or were recaptured by the Patriots. The British took along some 12,000 at the end of the war; of these 8000 remained in slavery. Including those who left during the war, a total of about 8000 to 10,000 ex-slaves gained freedom.^[186] About 4000 freed slaves went to Nova Scotia along with about 1200 blacks who remained slaves.^[187][188]
Baller (2006) examines family dynamics and mobilization for the Revolution in central Massachusetts. He reports that warfare and the farming culture were sometimes incompatible. Militiamen found that living and working on the family farm had not prepared them for wartime marches and the rigors of camp life. Rugged individualism conflicted with military discipline and regimentation. A man's birth order often influenced his military recruitment, as younger sons went to war and older sons took charge of the farm. A person's family responsibilities and the prevalent patriarchy could impede mobilization. Harvesting duties and family emergencies pulled men home regardless of the sergeant's orders. Some relatives might be Loyalists, creating internal strains. On the whole, historians conclude the Revolution's effect on patriarchy and inheritance patterns favored egalitarianism.^[189]
McDonnell (2006) shows a grave complication in Virginia's mobilization of troops was the conflicting interests of distinct social classes, which tended to undercut a unified commitment to the Patriot cause. The Assembly balanced the competing demands of elite slave-owning planters, the middling yeomen (some owning a few slaves), and landless indentured servants, among other groups. The Assembly used deferments, taxes, military service substitute, and conscription to resolve the tensions. Unresolved class conflict, however, made these laws less effective. There were violent protests, many cases of evasion, and large-scale desertion, so that Virginia's contributions came at embarrassingly low levels. With the British invasion of the state in 1781, Virginia was mired in class division as its native son, George Washington, made desperate appeals for troops.^[190]

Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau at Yorktown, 1781

Costs of the War

Casualties

Americans and allies

The total loss of life throughout the war is largely unknown. As was typical in the wars of the era, disease claimed far more lives than battle. Between 1775 and 1782 a smallpox epidemic swept across North America, killing 40 people in Boston alone. Historian Joseph Ellis suggests that Washington's decision to have his troops inoculated against the smallpox epidemic was one of his most important decisions.^[191]
At least 25,000 American Patriots died during active military service.^[16] About 6,800 of these deaths were in battle; the other 17,000 recorded deaths were from disease, including about 8,000–12,000 who died of starvation or disease brought on by deplorable conditions while prisoners of war,^[192] most in rotting British prison ships in New York. Another estimate, however, puts the total death toll at around 70,000, which if true would make the conflict proportionately deadlier than the American Civil War.^[8] The uncertainty arises from the number of disease deaths, which were believed to be quite numerous, amounting to an estimated 10,000 in 1776 alone.^[8] The number of Patriots seriously wounded or disabled by the war has been estimated from 8,500 to 25,000.^[193] Proportionate to the population of the colonies, the Revolutionary War was at least the second-deadliest conflict in American history, ranking ahead of World War II and behind only the Civil War.

British and allies

In 1784, a British lieutenant compiled a detailed list of 205 British officers killed in action during the war, including deaths in Europe, the Caribbean, and the East Indies.^[194] An extrapolation based on this list puts British Army losses at some 4,000 killed and died of wounds.^[8] A table from 1781 puts total British Army deaths at 6,046 in North America (from 1775 to 1779) and 3,326 in the West Indies (from 1778 to 1780).^[195] Approximately 1,800 Germans were killed in combat out of a total of 7,774 deaths.^[8] British returns in 1783 listed 43,633 rank and file deaths "in the British service".^[196]
About 171,000 sailors served in the Royal Navy during the war; about a quarter had been pressed into service. About 1,240 were killed in battle, while 18,500 died from disease (figures from 1776 to 1780 only).^[20] The greatest killer was scurvy, a disease that had been shown to be preventable by issuing lemon or lime juice to sailors but was not taken seriously. Scurvy would be eradicated in the Royal Navy in the 1790s by the chairman of the Navy's Sick and Hurt Board, Gilbert Blane. About 42,000 British sailors deserted during the war.^[197]

Costs

Main article: Financial costs of the American Revolutionary War

The British spent about £80 million and ended with a national debt of £250 million, which it easily financed at about £9.5 million a year in interest.^[198] The French spent 1.3 billion livres (about £56 million). Their total national debt was £187 million, which they could not easily finance; over half the French national revenue went to debt service in the 1780s. The debt crisis became a major factor of the French Revolution as the government could not raise taxes without public approval.^[199] The United States spent $37 million at the national level plus $114 million by the states. This was mostly covered by loans from France and the Netherlands, loans from Americans, and issuance of an increasing amount of paper money (which became "not worth a continental"). The U.S. finally solved its debt and currency problems in the 1790s when Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton secured legislation by which the national government assumed all of the state debts, and in addition created a national bank and a funding system based on tariffs and bond issues that paid off the foreign debts.^[200]

Loyalists

Main article: Loyalist (American Revolution)

Historians^[157] have estimated that approximately 40 to 45 percent of the colonists supported the rebellion, while 15 to 20 percent remained loyal to the Crown. The rest attempted to remain neutral and kept a low profile.
At least 25,000 Loyalists fought on the side of the British. Thousands served in the Royal Navy. On land, Loyalist forces fought alongside the British in most battles in North America. Many Loyalists fought in partisan units, especially in the Southern theater.^[158]
The British military met with many difficulties in maximizing the use of Loyalist factions. British historian Jeremy Black wrote, "In the American war it was clear to both royal generals and revolutionaries that organized and significant Loyalist activity would require the presence of British forces."^[159] In the South, the use of Loyalists presented the British with "major problems of strategic choice" since while it was necessary to widely disperse troops in order to defend Loyalist areas, it was also recognized that there was a need for "the maintenance of large concentrated forces able" to counter major attacks from the American forces.^[160] In addition, the British were forced to ensure that their military actions would not "offend Loyalist opinion", eliminating such options as attempting to "live off the country", destroying property for intimidation purposes, or coercing payments from colonists ("laying them under contribution").^[161]

British

Main article: British Army during the American War of Independence

The Death of Major Peirson, in the 1781 Battle of Jersey

Britain entered the war with confidence; it had the world's most powerful navy, a well-trained professional army, a sound financial system that could pay the costs, a stable government, and experienced leadership.^[162] However they were beset with major challenges. Compared to the Americans, the British had no major allies, and only had troops provided by small German states to bolster the small British Army. At the onset of the war, the British Army was less than 48,000 strong worldwide, and suffered from a lack of effective recruiting. By 1778, the army was pardoning criminals for military service and had extended the age range for service to be from 16 to 50. Although its officer and non-commissioned officer corps were relatively professional and experienced, this professionalism was diluted because wealthy individuals lacking military experience could purchase commissions and promotions. As a consequence, inexperienced officers sometimes found their way into positions of high responsibility.^[163]
Distance was also a major problem for the British. Although the Royal Navy was the largest and most experienced in the world at the time, it sometimes took months for troops to reach North America, and orders were often out of date because the military situation on the ground had changed by the time they arrived.^[164] Additionally, the British had logistical problems whenever they operated away from the coast; they were vulnerable to guerilla attacks on their supply chains whenever they went far inland. On a logistical note, the flints used in British weapons also put them at a disadvantage on the battlefield. British flints could fire only 6 rounds before requiring re-sharpening, while American flints could fire 60 rounds before resharpening. A common expression ran among the redcoats; which was that "Yankee flint was as good as a glass of grog."^[165] Although discipline was harsh in the army, the redcoats had little self-discipline; gambling, looting, promiscuity and heavy drinking were common problems, among all ranks alike. The army suffered from mediocre organisation in terms of logistics, food supplies were often bad and the sparse land of America offered little in the way of finding reliable substitutes.^[166]

Map of campaigns in the Revolutionary War

Suppressing a rebellion in America also posed other problems. At the onset of the war, the British had around 8,000 men stationed in North America. However, these were required to cover an area that stretched from northern Canada to Florida, a distance of almost 2,000 miles (3,200 km). As the colonies had not been united before the war, there was no central area of strategic importance. In European conflicts, the capture of a capital city often meant the end of the war; however in America, when the British seized key cities such as New York, Philadelphia or Boston—or Washington, D.C. in the War of 1812 thirty years later—the war continued unabated. Furthermore, despite the fact that at its height, the British fielded some 56,000 men in the colonies exclusive of mercenaries and militia,^[167] they lacked sufficient numbers. It was not unusual for the Americans to suffer a string of defeats, only to have the British retreat because they could not occupy the captured land. Despite strong Loyalist support, these troops were often displaced by Patriot militia when British regulars were not in the area, demonstrated at battles such as Kings Mountain. As a result of the manpower shortage and Patriot control of the countryside, where the majority of the American population lived, the British often could not simultaneously defeat the Americans on the field and occupy the captured areas, evidenced by withdrawals from Philadelphia and the Carolinas after great initial success. The manpower shortage became critical when France, Spain and the Netherlands entered the war, as the British were spread across several theatres worldwide, when before they were concentrated only in America.^[168]
The British also had to contend with several psychological factors during the conflict. The need to maintain Loyalist allegiance provided setbacks, as the British could not use the harsh methods of suppressing rebellion they had used in Ireland and Scotland. Loyalists often came from the same communities as Patriots and as a result, such methods could not be employed for fear of alienating them. Even despite these limitations, neutral colonists were often driven into the ranks of the Revolutionaries due to the conflict, such as the war in the Carolinas, marked by heavy brutality on both sides.^[169] A single American victory could often reverse the impact of a string of British successes, as shown by engagements at Trenton, Bennington, King's Mountain and even defeats such as Germantown,^[151] all of which went a long way to galvanizing Patriot support for the war, and of persuading European powers such as France and Spain to support the rebellion.
Early in 1775, the British Army consisted of about 36,000 men worldwide, but wartime recruitment steadily increased this number. Great Britain had a difficult time appointing general officers, however. General Thomas Gage, in command of British forces in North America when the rebellion started, was criticized for being too lenient (perhaps influenced by his American wife). General Jeffrey Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst turned down an appointment as commander in chief due to an unwillingness to take sides in the conflict.^[170] Similarly, Admiral Augustus Keppel turned down a command, saying "I cannot draw the sword in such a cause." The Earl of Effingham publicly resigned his commission when his 22nd Regiment of foot was posted to America, and William Howe and John Burgoyne were members of parliament who opposed military solutions to the American rebellion. Howe and Henry Clinton stated that they were unwilling participants in the war and were only following orders.^[171] The British Parliament was also far from united in supporting military opposition to the American Patriots. Lord North held the post of Prime Minister with a Tory majority backing him, advocating military suppression of the American rebellion. However, they were constantly and vehemently opposed by a large Whig minority, with politicians such as Charles James Fox and Edmund Burke of the Rockingham Whigs fiercely voicing their derision of pursuing military solutions to the rebellion. The Whigs gained prominence in Parliament as the British suffered strategic defeats at Saratoga and later at Yorktown, resulting in the collapse of Lord North's ministry.
Over the course of the war, Great Britain signed treaties with various German states, which supplied about 30,000 soldiers.^[172] Germans made up about one-third of the British troop strength in North America. The Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel contributed more soldiers than any other state, and German soldiers became known as "Hessians" to the Americans. Revolutionary speakers called German soldiers "foreign mercenaries", and they are scorned as such in the Declaration of Independence. By 1779, the number of British and German troops stationed in North America was over 60,000, although these were spread from Canada to Florida.^[173] Initially, several German principalities offered military support to Great Britain but these offers were rejected. However, as the war dragged on it became clear that Great Britain would need the extra manpower of the German states and led to Great Britain seeking support from German principalities such as Hesse-Kassel and Ansbach-Bayreuth.^[174]
The Secretary of State at War Lord Barrington and the Adjutant-General Edward Harvey were both strongly opposed to outright war on land. In 1766 Barrington had recommended withdrawing the army from the Thirteen Colonies to Canada, Nova Scotia and Florida. At the beginning of the war he urged a naval blockade, which would quickly damage the colonists' trading activities.^[175]

Patriots

atriots

Main articles: Continental Army and Minutemen

1st Maryland Regiment holding the line at the Battle of Guilford

The Americans began the war with significant disadvantages compared to the British. They had no national government, no national army or navy, no financial system, no banks, no established credit, and no functioning government departments, such as a treasury. The Congress tried to handle administrative affairs through legislative committees, which proved inefficient. The state governments were themselves brand new and officials had no administrative experience. In peacetime the colonies relied heavily on ocean travel and shipping, but that was now shut down by the British blockade and the Americans had to rely on slow overland travel.
However, the Americans had multiple advantages that in the long run outweighed the initial disadvantages they faced. The Americans had a large prosperous population that depended not on imports but on local production for food and most supplies, while the British were mostly shipped in from across the ocean. The British faced a vast territory far larger than Britain or France, located at a far distance from home ports. Most of the Americans lived on farms distant from the seaports—the British could capture any port but that did not give them control over the hinterland. They were on their home ground, had a smoothly functioning, well organized system of local and state governments, newspapers and printers, and internal lines of communications. They had a long-established system of local militia, previously used to combat the French and Native Americans, with companies and an officer corps that could form the basis of local militias, and provide a training ground for the national army created by Congress.^[149]
Motivation was a major asset. The Patriots wanted to win; over 200,000 fought in the war; 25,000 died. The British expected the Loyalists to do much of the fighting, but they did much less than expected. The British also hired German mercenaries to do much of their fighting.^[150]
At the onset of the war, the Americans had no major international allies. Battles such as the Battle of Bennington, the Battles of Saratoga and even defeats such as the Battle of Germantown^[151] proved decisive in gaining the attention and support of powerful European nations such as France and Spain, who moved from covertly supplying the Americans with weapons and supplies, to overtly supporting them militarily, moving the war to a global stage.^[152]
The new Continental Army suffered significantly from a lack of an effective training regime, and largely inexperienced officers and sergeants. The inexperience of its officers was compensated for in part by its senior officers; officers such as George Washington, Horatio Gates, Charles Lee, Richard Montgomery and Francis Marion all had military experience with the British Army during the French and Indian War. The Americans solved their training dilemma during their stint in Winter Quarters at Valley Forge, where they were relentlessly drilled and trained by General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, a veteran of the famed Prussian General Staff. He taught the Continental Army the essentials of military discipline, drills, tactics and strategy, and wrote the Revolutionary War Drill Manual.^[153] When the Army emerged from Valley Forge, it proved its ability to equally match the British troops in battle when they fought a successful strategic action at the Battle of Monmouth.^[114]

Population density in the American Colonies in 1775

When the war began, the 13 colonies lacked a professional army or navy. Each colony sponsored local militia. Militiamen were lightly armed, had little training, and usually did not have uniforms. Their units served for only a few weeks or months at a time, were reluctant to travel far from home and thus were unavailable for extended operations, and lacked the training and discipline of soldiers with more experience. If properly used, however, their numbers could help the Continental armies overwhelm smaller British forces, as at the battles of Concord, Bennington and Saratoga, and the siege of Boston. Both sides used partisan warfare but the Americans effectively suppressed Loyalist activity when British regulars were not in the area.^[154]
Seeking to coordinate military efforts, the Continental Congress established a regular army on June 14, 1775, and appointed George Washington as commander-in-chief. The development of the Continental Army was always a work in progress, and Washington used both his regulars and state militia throughout the war.
The United States Marine Corps traces its institutional roots to the Continental Marines of the war, formed by a resolution of the Continental Congress on November 10, 1775, a date regarded and celebrated as the birthday of the Marine Corps. At the beginning of 1776, Washington's army had 20,000 men, with two-thirds enlisted in the Continental Army and the other third in the various state militias.^[155] At the end of the American Revolution in 1783, both the Continental Navy and Continental Marines were disbanded. About 250,000 men served as regulars or as militiamen for the Revolutionary cause in the eight years of the war, but there were never more than 90,000 men under arms at one time.
Armies were small by European standards of the era, largely attributable to limitations such as lack of powder and other logistical capabilities on the American side.^[156] It was also difficult for Great Britain to transport troops across the Atlantic and they depended on local supplies that the Patriots tried to cut off. By comparison, Duffy notes that Frederick the Great usually commanded from 23,000 to 50,000 in battle.^{[citation needed]} Both figures pale in comparison to the armies that were fielded in the early 19th century, where troop formations approached or exceeded 100,000 men.

Analysis of combatants

The population of Great Britain and Ireland in 1780 was approximately 12.6 million^[141] while the population of the thirteen colonies for the same year has been estimated at 2.8 million including over 500,000 slaves.^[142] Theoretically this gave Britain a 4.5:1 manpower advantage. By comparison the Union's manpower advantage over the Confederacy in the American Civil War was only 2.5:1. In practice, the British army never had more than a slight numerical advantage over the Continental Army due to a number of factors, including the need to maintain significant numbers of troops outside of North America. Conscription outside of naval impressment did not exist in Britain at that time, and the proportion of Americans willing to serve in their own country's defense was believed to be considerably larger than the proportion of Britons willing to serve overseas. One pre-war estimate claimed that the Patriots could mobilize 100,000 men in a matter of months,^[143] but substantial loyalist or neutralist sentiment would keep Patriot forces much smaller than their potential.^[144][145]
Historians continue to debate whether the odds for American victory were long or short. John E. Ferling says the odds were so long that the American victory was "Almost A Miracle."^[146] On the other hand, Joseph Ellis says the odds favored the Americans, and asks whether there ever was any realistic chance for the British to win. He argues that this opportunity came only once, in the summer of 1776 and the British failed that test. Admiral Howe and his brother General Howe, "missed several opportunities to destroy the Continental Army....Chance, luck, and even the vagaries of the weather played crucial roles." Ellis's point is that the strategic and tactical decisions of the Howes were fatally flawed because they underestimated the challenges posed by the Patriots. Ellis concludes that once the Howe brothers failed, the opportunity for a British victory "would never come again."^[147]:11 The U.S. Army's official textbook argues that while the British difficulties were great, they were hardly insurmountable. "The British forfeited several chances for military victory in 1776–1777, and again in 1780 they might have won had they been able to throw 10,000 fresh troops into the American war."^[148]

Treaty of Paris

Main article: Treaty of Paris (1783)

Benjamin West's famous painting of the American delegations at the Treaty of Paris. The British delegation refused to pose, and the painting was never completed.

In London, as political support for the war plummeted after Yorktown, British Prime Minister Lord North resigned in March 1782. In April 1782, the Commons voted to end the war in America. Preliminary peace articles were signed in Paris at the end of November 1782; the formal end of the war did not occur until the Treaty of Paris (for the U.S.) and the Treaties of Versailles (for the other Allies) were signed on September 3, 1783. The last British troops left New York City on November 25, 1783, and the United States Congress of the Confederation ratified the Paris treaty on January 14, 1784.^[137]
Britain negotiated the Paris peace treaty without consulting her Native American allies and ceded all Native American territory between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River to the United States. Native Americans reluctantly confirmed these land cessions with the United States in a series of treaties, but the fighting would be renewed in conflicts along the frontier in the coming years, the largest being the Northwest Indian War.^[138] The British sought to establish a buffer Indian state in the American Midwest, and continued to pursue that goal as late as 1814 in the War of 1812.^[139][140]
The United States gained more than it expected, thanks to the award of western territory. The other Allies had mixed-to-poor results. France made some gains over its nemesis, Great Britain, but its material gains were minimal and its financial losses huge. It was already in financial trouble and its borrowing to pay for the war used up all its credit and created the financial disasters that marked the 1780s. Historians link those disasters to the coming of the French Revolution. The Dutch clearly lost on all points. The Spanish had a mixed result; they did not achieve their primary war goal (recovery of Gibraltar), but they did gain territory. However, in the long run, as the case of Florida shows, the new territory was of little or no value.^[29]

Fourth Anglo-Dutch War

Main article: Fourth Anglo-Dutch War

The Dutch Republic, nominally neutral, had been trading with the Americans, exchanging Dutch arms and munitions for American colonial wares (in contravention of the British Navigation Acts), primarily through activity based in St. Eustatius, before the French formally entered the war.^[134] The British considered this trade to include contraband military supplies and had attempted to stop it, at first diplomatically by appealing to previous treaty obligations, interpretation of whose terms the two nations disagreed on, and then by searching and seizing Dutch merchant ships. The situation escalated when the British seized a Dutch merchant convoy sailing under Dutch naval escort in December 1779, prompting the Dutch to join the League of Armed Neutrality. Britain responded to this decision by declaring war on the Dutch in December 1780, sparking the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War.^[135] The war was a military and economic disaster for the Dutch Republic. Paralyzed by internal political divisions, it could not respond effectively to British blockades of its coast and the capture of many of its colonies. In the 1784 peace treaty between the two nations, the Dutch lost the Indian port of Negapatam and were forced to make trade concessions.^[136] The Dutch Republic signed a friendship and trade agreement with the United States in 1782, becoming the second country to formally recognize the United States.

Britain vs. France, Spain, Mysore, and Holland 1778–1783

Europe

[show] v t e American Revolutionary War: European & Atlantic Waters

Spain entered the war as a French ally with the goal of recapturing Gibraltar and Minorca, which had been captured by an Anglo-Dutch force in 1704. Gibraltar was besieged for more than three years, but the British garrison stubbornly resisted and was resupplied twice: once after Admiral Rodney's victory over Juan de Lángara in the 1780 "Moonlight Battle", and again by Admiral Richard Howe in 1782. Further Franco-Spanish efforts to capture Gibraltar were unsuccessful. One notable success took place on February 5, 1782, when Spanish and French forces captured Minorca, which Spain retained after the war. Ambitious plans for an invasion of Great Britain in 1779 had to be abandoned.

West Indies and Gulf Coast

[show] v t e American Revolutionary War: West Indies

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  The Battle of the Saintes fought on April 12, 1782 near Guadeloupe.
  
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  Bernardo de Gálvez.
  
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  Norteamerica, 1792, Jaillot-Elwe, Florida's borders after Bernardo Gálvez's military actions.
  
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  Spanish forces at the Siege of Pensacola (1781).
  

There was much action in the West Indies, especially in the Lesser Antilles. Although France lost St. Lucia early in the war, its navy dominated the West Indies, capturing Dominica, Grenada, Saint Vincent, Montserrat, Tobago, St. Kitts and the Turks and Caicos between 1778 and 1782. Dutch possessions in the West Indies and South America were captured by Britain but later recaptured by France and restored to the Dutch Republic. At the Battle of the Saintes in April 1782, a victory by Rodney's fleet over the French Admiral de Grasse frustrated the hopes of France and Spain to take Jamaica and other colonies from the British.^[130]
In the Gulf Coast campaign, Count Bernardo de Gálvez, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, quickly removed the British from their outposts on the lower Mississippi River in 1779 in actions at Manchac and Baton Rouge in British West Florida. Gálvez then captured Mobile in 1780 and stormed and captured the British citadel and capital of Pensacola in 1781. On May 8, 1782, Gálvez captured the British naval base at New Providence in the Bahamas; it was ceded by Spain after the Treaty of Paris and simultaneously recovered by British Loyalists in 1783. Gálvez' actions led to the Spanish acquisition of East and West Florida in the peace settlement, denied the British the opportunity of encircling the American forces from the south, and kept open a vital conduit for supplies to the American frontier. The Continental Congress cited Gálvez in 1785 for his aid during the revolution and George Washington took him to his right during the first parade of July 4.^[131]
Central America was also subject to conflict between Britain and Spain, as Britain sought to expand its informal trading influence beyond coastal logging and fishing communities in present-day Belize, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Expeditions against San Fernando de Omoa in 1779 and San Juan in 1780 (the latter famously led by a young Horatio Nelson) met with only temporary success before being abandoned due to disease. The Spanish colonial leaders, in turn, could not completely eliminate British influences along the Mosquito Coast. Except for the French acquisition of Tobago, sovereignty in the West Indies was returned to the status quo ante bellum in the peace of 1783.

India

[show] v t e Atlantic theatre

Main article: Second Anglo-Mysore War

Suffren meeting with ally Hyder Ali in 1783. J.B. Morret engraving, 1789.

When word reached India in 1778 that France had entered the war, the British East India Company moved quickly to capture French trading outposts there, capturing Pondicherry after two months of siege.^[132] The capture of the French-controlled port of Mahé on India's west coast motivated Mysore's ruler, Hyder Ali (who was already upset at other British actions, and benefited from trade through the port), to open the Second Anglo-Mysore War in 1780. Ali, and later his son Tipu Sultan, almost drove the British from southern India but was frustrated by weak French support, and the war ended status quo ante bellum with the 1784 Treaty of Mangalore. French opposition was led in 1782 and 1783 by Admiral the Baillie de Suffren, who recaptured Trincomalee from the British and fought five celebrated, but largely inconclusive, naval engagements against British Admiral Sir Edward Hughes.^[133] France's trading posts in India were returned after the war.

Naval war

Main article: Naval operations in the American Revolutionary War

Combat de la Dominique, April 17, 1780, by Auguste Louis de Rossel de Cercy (1736–1804)

When the war began, the British had overwhelming naval superiority over the American colonists although their fleet was old and in poor condition, a situation that would be blamed on Lord Sandwich, the First Lord of the Admiralty. During the first three years of the war, the Royal Navy was primarily used to transport troops for land operations and to protect commercial shipping. The American colonists had no ships of the line, and relied extensively on privateering to harass British shipping. The privateers caused worry disproportionate to their material success, although those operating out of French channel ports before and after France joined the war caused significant embarrassment to the Royal Navy and inflamed Anglo-French relations. About 55,000 American sailors served aboard the privateers during the war.^[127] The American privateers had almost 1,700 ships, and they captured 2,283 enemy ships.^[128] The Continental Congress authorized the creation of a small Continental Navy in October 1775, which was primarily used for commerce raiding. John Paul Jones became the first great American naval hero, capturing HMS Drake on April 24, 1778, the first victory for any American military vessel in British waters.^[129]

The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, September 13, 1782, by John Singleton Copley

During the second period, the successive interventions of France, Spain, and the Netherlands extended the naval war until it ranged from the West Indies to the Bay of Bengal. This second period lasted from the summer of 1778 to the middle of 1783, and it included operations already been in progress in America or for the protection of commerce, and naval campaigns on a great scale carried out by the fleets of the maritime powers.

Downfall of the North Ministry

News of the surrender at Yorktown arrived in Britain in November 1781. King George III took the news calmly and delivered a defiant address pledging to continue the war; a majority of the House of Commons endorsed it. In the succeeding months news arrived of other reverses, however. The French and Spanish successfully took several West Indian islands and appeared to be on the verge of completely expelling the British there. Minorca also surrendered to a Franco-Spanish force on February 5, 1782 and Gibraltar seemed to be in danger of falling as well. In light of this, Parliament on February 27, 1782 voted to cease all offensive operations in America and seek peace. Threatened with votes of no confidence, on March 20 Lord North resigned and his Tory government was replaced by the Whigs. Ironically, shortly after North resigned the British won the Battle of the Saintes, putting an end to the French threat in the West Indies, and they successfully relieved Gibraltar. Had the North government held out for a few more months they would have been considerably strengthened and could have continued the war in spite of Yorktown.
The new Whig administration accepted American independence as a basis for peace. There were no further major military activities in North America, although the British still had 30,000 garrison troops occupying New York City, Charleston, and Savannah.^[126] The war continued elsewhere, including the siege of Gibraltar and naval operations in the East and West Indies, until peace was agreed in September 1783.

Virginia, 1781

Main article: Yorktown campaign

Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown by (John Trumbull, 1797)

Cornwallis proceeded from Wilmington north into Virginia, on the grounds that Virginia needed to be subdued in order to hold the southern colonies. Earlier, in January 1781, a small British raiding force under Benedict Arnold had landed there, and began moving through the countryside, destroying supply depots, mills, and other economic targets. In February, General Washington dispatched General Lafayette to counter Arnold, later also sending General Anthony Wayne. Arnold was reinforced with additional troops from New York in March, and his army was joined with that of Cornwallis in May. Lafayette skirmished with Cornwallis, avoiding a large-scale battle while gathering reinforcements.
Cornwallis' Virginia campaign was strongly opposed by his superior, General Clinton, who did not believe such a large and disease-ridden area, with a hostile population, could be pacified with the limited forces available. Clinton instead favored conducting operations further north in the Chesapeake region (Maryland, Delaware, and southern Pennsylvania) where he believed there was a strong Loyalist presence. Upon his arrival at Williamsburg in June, Cornwallis received orders from Clinton to establish a fortified naval base and a request to send several thousand troops to New York to counter a possible Franco-American attack. Following these orders, he fortified Yorktown, and, shadowed by Lafayette, awaited the arrival of the Royal Navy.^[123]
The northern, southern, and naval theaters of the war converged in 1781 at Yorktown, Virginia. The French fleet became available for operations, which could either move against Yorktown or New York. Washington still favored attacking New York, but the French decided to send the fleet to their preferred target at Yorktown. Learning of the planned movement of the French fleet in August, Washington began moving his army south to cooperate. The British fleet, not realizing that the French had sent their entire fleet to America, dispatched an inadequate force under Admiral Graves, though the underlying reason for this was a lack of naval resources. Since the entry of France and Spain into the war, the British lacked the necessary ships to match their opponents' every move.^[124]

The French (left) and British (right) lines at the Battle of the Chesapeake

In early September, French naval forces defeated the British fleet at the Battle of the Chesapeake, cutting off Cornwallis' escape. Cornwallis, still expecting to receive support, failed to break out while he had the chance. When Washington's army arrived outside Yorktown, Cornwallis prematurely abandoned his outer position, hastening his subsequent defeat. The combined Franco-American force of 18,900 men began besieging Cornwallis in early October. For several days, the French and Americans bombarded the British defenses, and then began taking the outer redoubts. The British attempted to cobble together a relief expedition, but encountered numerous delays. Cornwallis decided his position was becoming untenable and he surrendered his entire army of over 7,000 men on October 19, 1781, the same day that the British fleet at New York sailed for his relief.^[125]