I have read a few books on the American revolution but I don’t know military history or tactics very well. So my question- could the Americans succeeded if the French did not provide aid but instead remained neutral? It seems to me that at least the French, and not so much other European countries, with their soldiers, ships, tactics and money were pivotal to the colonists.
I think the only possible answer is…maybe. There were a number of things the British could have done to win (and a few more not to lose.) The southern strategy turned into a disaster. The Saratoga campaign might better have been launched from New York northward to cut the Hudson crossings. (And best of all, not let it turn into a war in the first place…)
The French helped a lot, but, in a sad way, the British also helped, by less than stellar strategy.
Also…the Colonies could have been more forthcoming with supplies for their own army. Letting the army suffer in winter quarters without sufficient supplies was a rotten bit of strategy on their part. Both sides made remarkable blunders.
My opinion is that the Revolution would not have succeeded. France contributed vast sums of money, thousands of troops, and two major fleets. The victory at Yorktown, among others, simply would not have been possible without French help. As a matter of fact, if you go simply by numbers, the force at Yorktown could almost be considered a French force that was commanded by an American.
I think the Revolution probably would’ve failed without French help. The Continental gov’t was really dysfunctional, and never really had the organization necessary to feed/supply the army. And the Brits had a huge naval advantage and a decent military one, and so could both keep up pressure and disrupt trade. Had they been able to continue as they were in 1778, I think the Continental army would’ve eventually mutinied or just melted away, and Congress would’ve had to seek terms.
But the French not only helped prop up the US through loans and trade and military help in N. America, but probably more importantly, they turned the conflict into a global war. The American colonies, for all their size, were something of a money pit for the Brits, while smaller colonies in the Carribean and other places were hugely lucrative. As the French and Spanish started capturing these, the Brits had to pull men and ships out of N. America, and trying to keep pressure up on the rebels just became a distraction from saving the more lucrative, less rebellious, easier to protect bits of the empire.
My guess would be probably not. The British had a hard time pinning down the Americans in a battle so they would have had a hard time winning the war militarily. But there was also an economic conflict going on and the British did better in that. Washington and Congress had to keep enough supplies flowing to maintain their army in existence; if the army had melted away due to a lack of supplies that would have been the effective end of the revolution. And France was a critical source for those supplies.
There was also the factor that France diverted a lot of British attention away from America. Britain rightfully saw France as a more serious threat than the American rebels were so they held back a lot of their strength to defend against French attacks in the Caribbean and other parts of the British Empire (as well as maintaining a stronger defense in Britain itself). If London hadn’t had to worry about a French threat, it could have sent more troops and ships to fight the Americans.
I’m another vote for “no”. Without a fleet to oppose the British they could evacuate an army from defeat and drop them off elsewhere to constantly harass the colonies. The French made that more difficult. French troops were also important; at the siege of Yorktown there were almost as many French soldiers as British (making the American + French army over double the British army). Even with French support the war took over eight years.
Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy’s The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire is quite excellent. O’Shaughnessy works at Monticello but holds dual UK/US citizenship. Many British scholars have avoided this embarrassing subject–were all the Brit leadership idiots? It wasn’t that simple.
He shows the various strengths & weaknesses of the King, his ministers & some generals. Certainly, some were more talented than others–but lack of organization, even in London, kept things inefficient. Also, governing actions a long sea voyage from London were difficult; British generals in different parts of the colonies also had problems communicating.
Mainly, O’Shaughnessy pointed out that the Revolution became a world war after France, Spain & the Netherlands joined the fray. Beyond the obvious support (money, materiel & boots on the ground), the Army & Royal Navy were stretched perilously thin. They were fighting as far away as India! While guarding closer assets (like the wealthy sugar colonies) & shielding Britain from possible invasion from France, the Ancient Enemy.
British forces (& their expensive German allies) could win battles here but did not have enough manpower for occupation forces. A British victory would encourage Loyalists to emerge–then, often, trail after the Brits as they retreated to Manhattan. Their Patriot neighbors might be unkind…
The final result: Britain managed to retain the rest of the Empire it had gained in the Seven Years War. But had to let the 13 colonies go–because the war was too expensive.
As long as we’re playing the what if game what if the colonies had convinced Canada to join as opposed to France?
I’ll buck the common consensus and say that, yes, the Americans would have (eventually) won against the British even without heavy French assistance. It would have been longer, and more drawn out and I’m not sure that the US we have today (or it’s relationship to the UK) would be anything remotely like it is, but I think that eventually the Brits were bound to lose. I don’t think people really have a grasp on how difficult or costly it was for the Brits to put even the relatively modest forces into the field that they did so far from their shores, or how difficult it was or would be to contain a large scale popular uprising such as what happened in the American Revolution. In addition, the longer it dragged on the more unpopular it was becoming back home…and it was never all that popular, at least among the masses back in Britain. To me, that’s the key factor…the people back home simply didn’t WANT to fight the colonies, there was no will to do so, the war was and would have continued to be a money pit without the French to give the rebels the boost to finish things relatively quickly and relatively painlessly. That said, the French help WAS the decisive factor in ending things when and how we did and if the intention is to give the French credit where credit is due, I’m all for that. Of course, the flip side is that we had the War of 1812 as well as a lot of contentiousness between the US and France post revolution.
The Revolutionary War, in many ways, was a contest to see which side could fight off war weariness and indebtedness long enough to give up last. The French alliance gave the Americans a much-needed morale and financial boost, while at the same time making the war a lot more unpopular and expensive in Great Britain. I believe it was the decisive factor in inducing the British to blink first.
George Washington got his ass kicked up and down the battlefield until he went into Valley Forge. What happened at Valley Forge (aside from a lot of folks dying or otherwise having a fairly miserable time) was that he got all of his troops trained in proper bayonet fighting and proper military discipline. This came courtesy of the French, and some Prussians as well. Without that training, I doubt that Washington’s army could have ever really gone toe to toe in an all-out battle against the British.
Another thing were the muskets. The main military musket in the U.S. prior to the revolutionary war was the British infantry musket, aka the “Brown Bess”. For some silly reason the British didn’t want to supply us with any more of these muskets once the shooting started. The French however were more than happy to supply us with Charleville muskets (actually a misnomer - Charleville was just the site of one armory, but since the Americans buying the muskets didn’t know any better they just kept asking for them “Charleville” muskets even though what they really wanted were standard French infantry muskets). It was a great way for the French to sell off all of their old and outdated earlier muskets.
We copied the Charlevilles. If you look at early American muskets like the Springfield and Harper’s Ferry muskets, they were pretty much just copies of the Charleville, right down to even firing the exact same caliber musket ball (the .69 used by the French, as opposed to the .75 used by the British). While we were able to make our own muskets, we weren’t all that good at it and had a really hard time making enough of them to keep up with the demand. We didn’t really get the high volume production thing figured out until close to the end of the War of 1812.
So without French help, we wouldn’t have had enough muskets and we wouldn’t have fought very well with the ones that we did have.
I’m not really sure how it would have played out. One of the reasons that we won our independence was that the British didn’t really commit to the war. They had a lot of troops in the Caribbean but they left them there to guard what the British considered to be much more valuable assets. Had the British moved some of those troops up to fight the rebelling colonists, Washington would have been completely overwhelmed. The British just didn’t think that the 13 colonies were worth fighting all that hard for.
This makes me think that XT has a good point. If the war had dragged on, the British may have just said screw it and just abandoned the colonies.
On the other hand, without those muskets and some proper training, Washington would have likely gotten his ass stomped on rather hard after coming out of Valley Forge. I’m not sure that his men would have been able to keep up their morale if the British would have kept kicking their backsides every time they had a major battle.
It didn’t help that for a lot of folks the idea of creating an Independent Country included enough distrust of authority to make them resist the very idea of a Continental Army. They wanted the fighting to be done with local militias, defending their homes.
The French didn’t have to make many direct, offensive moves to factor into the British war effort, so it may not have changed much even had they not directly supported us. Its true that French assistance directly led to the victory at Yorktown and the end of the war., although that may have simply sped up the inevitable by that point. However, French diplomatic support was invaluable for making it impossible for the British to find some kind of victory, and in forcing them to the table for a formal treaty and recognition.
One factor I can’t quite figure out is how much the French court’s financial help mattered. On paper, the amount was substantial. However, I’ve had a hard time figuring out how much of it actually showed up as supplies that helped the colonists. Does anyone know if there’s any documentation about it?
As someone pointed out above, the British were very busy fighting the French and other countries elsewhere.
Alternate history often asks the question, “How far would Hitler have gotten if the USA were still a British colony?” Well, Napoleon wouldn’t have sold Louisiana to the British, so the colonies may have a border on the Mississippi.
It would have been a hard sell. Most Canadians back then were French-speaking Catholics (most of Canada had been French territory until 1763). In an effort to win support among them, the British Parliament had enacted the Quebec Act in 1774 which gave them a lot of local rights. This had been bitterly opposed by English-speaking Americans, who were overwhelmingly Protestant. So most Canadians felt they were getting a better deal living under British rule than they’d get under American rule and had no desire to join the rebellion.
Wouldn’t have made much difference at all. The Québécois were good irregulars, but didn’t have much by way of local regular units, unlike the British colonies. The French relied largely on regular French regiments to defend New France.
Emphasis added. I don’t know that a British defeat was inevitable ( though admittedly their best and perhaps only chance to win decisively was probably very early in the war ). But I’d say at the very least a negotiated settlement that split the colonies was a lot more likely. The nascent U.S. might have been flanked both to the north by Canada and to the south by a British-occupied zone from Virginia to Florida ( or worse ). No French, means absolutely no Yorktown at the very least. The 13 colonies might have ended up as eight or nine.
They might not have been the best fighters but denying the British safe harbor in North America would have made logistics near impossible.
But the British weren’t using Quebec for a port for war materiel. There was no real road network connecting Canada and the northern colonies.
The British used New York as their main port in the northern colonies, and Halifax as their naval base north of the colonies.
I was surprised to learn about the territory of New France*. I knew about the Louisiana Purchase, but figured that it had been the extent of French holdings (along with Quebec) in North America. But until the French and Indian War, in which George Washington fought, the French were holding the English Colonies to the eastern seaboard. British gains in 1763 cut the French holdings by nearly half. Was there ever a concern that the French would retake that area if the English war with the Colonies dragged on?
*Ancestry.com has some documents from New France, but IIRC they’re not quite as available as documents from the Colonies.