History Debate #2...with reward for the winner

[Dellivis]

Americans didn't have to ship men and supplies across the Atlantic to fight the war. That was very expensive ordeal on the British people to pay for.  History has shown that France, England, and Spain were always at odds with each other. This was a great opportunity for the French to take a stab at the English provided that the Americans could hold their own/possibly win against the British empire. 

I know this isnt much of a post but sadly the revolution wasn't my favorite time period for American history (Civil war buff) So I know very little. I do feel that even without the French the Colonies would of broken free from the British at a much later date due to the cost of the war (in both materials and men; afterall, the British had other colonies to look after as well).

 

[SleeStak]

There are two reasons the Colonists won the Revolution.

1. France.

2. They wouldn't give up.

Even in the face of overwhelming odds and even after seemingly endless battlefield losses, their will to fight was what kept them going. Exactly as you said, we Brits didn't have a strong enough will to hold the colonies than the colonies did to break free. What they had was their only homeland, what we had was a tiny fraction of our empire. That was, along with French intervention, the reason we did not defeat them. In all the times I've debated this issue, I've never once heard an America say "we simply had more fighting spirit". Excellent post as Auldman said.

Thank you Banastre,

I think maybe you are giving France intervention too much credit. While French intervention had a major impact on how the war played out, and even the timeline, we would have won that war without foreign assistance.  The reason is that the war was the wrong war for Britian.

The British were facing the challenges of projecting an 18th century force across an ocean for what can only be described as moderate economic gains.  They struggled with coordinating of the efforts of their forces and the challenges of operating in the 'howling wilderness' of North America.  Even a successful conclusion to the war would have meant accepting the defensive economic burden for a region that didn't produce as much revenue as many of their individual Carribean colonies. Looking at the history, its hard to understand why they fought in the first place.  They were positioned to get much of our trade whether we were a formal colony.  I'm sure they thought that it would be an easy win and not fighting meant we'd be the first domino in the loss of more colonies.

In short, I think we would have won whether the French jumped in or not.  The British had an expensive war with little to gain and would have realized that they probably benefitted from an independent United States more than they did from possessing the 13 colonies.

 

[Banastre]

There are two reasons the Colonists won the Revolution.

1. France.

2. They wouldn't give up.

Even in the face of overwhelming odds and even after seemingly endless battlefield losses, their will to fight was what kept them going. Exactly as you said, we Brits didn't have a strong enough will to hold the colonies than the colonies did to break free. What they had was their only homeland, what we had was a tiny fraction of our empire. That was, along with French intervention, the reason we did not defeat them. In all the times I've debated this issue, I've never once heard an America say "we simply had more fighting spirit". Excellent post as Auldman said.

Thank you Banastre,

I think maybe you are giving France intervention too much credit. While French intervention had a major impact on how the war played out, and even the timeline, we would have won that war without foreign assistance.  The reason is that the war was the wrong war for Britian.

The British were facing the challenges of projecting an 18th century force across an ocean for what can only be described as moderate economic gains.  They struggled with coordinating of the efforts of their forces and the challenges of operating in the 'howling wilderness' of North America.  Even a successful conclusion to the war would have meant accepting the defensive economic burden for a region that didn't produce as much revenue as many of their individual Carribean colonies. Looking at the history, its hard to understand why they fought in the first place.  They were positioned to get much of our trade whether we were a formal colony.  I'm sure they thought that it would be an easy win and not fighting meant we'd be the first domino in the loss of more colonies.

In short, I think we would have won whether the French jumped in or not.  The British had an expensive war with little to gain and would have realized that they probably benefitted from an independent United States more than they did from possessing the 13 colonies.

Exactly. The colonies had proven far more trouble than they were worth, with seemingly endless wars fought over them throughout the 18th century. As you said, the colonies' had been valued highly up until the 1770s for their timber, which supplied the Royal Navy, the strongest navy in the world. But by 1770, we'd just gained an even larger wilderness of timber to the north, Canada, and plus we'd aquired an abundant fur trade. Along with that, we'd also gained the precious metals, mines, and spices of India, and the sugar and coffee from our Carribean colonies. Add to this the fact that France and Spain still posed major threats thanks to the armies in their Western-American and South-American colonies.

As I said, the American were fighting for their only home, we were fighting for a useless fragment of our Empire. Don't get me wrong, it's not like we just gave up the colonies (once again referring to my statistics: ~20,000 Anglo-Hessian losses to all causes, ~70,000 Franco-Spanish-American losses to all causes, both figures including casualties taken worldwide, not just in the colonies), but I will admit, our troops didn't show half the fighting spirit of the Americans much of the time. It was the fact that they lost so much, that they were simply battered left and right, that kept the Americans going: they were prepared to either win the war, or go down fighting, regardless of losses.

 

[racaloo]

If they swore allegiance to Britain then they were traitors and if they didn't then they weren't.