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Britain and the ‘Long’ Eighteenth Century, 1688–1815

Jeremy Black

in The Practice of Strategy: From Alexander the Great to the Present

Jeremy Black focuses on British policy and strategy in the so‐called ‘long’ eighteenth century, beginning with the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and ending with the battle of Waterloo in 1815. Chapter ... More

Jeremy Black focuses on British policy and strategy in the so‐called ‘long’ eighteenth century, beginning with the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and ending with the battle of Waterloo in 1815. Chapter 7 provides a contextual debate on the relationship between policy and strategy, discussing the dynamics between strategy and dynasticism, the complexity of strategic culture, the character of British imperialism, and the concept of power, with the associated challenges of reach and overreach. These factors collectively explain what the author refers to as the limitations to strategic planning. Black next describes the dynamics between strategy and policy in three case studies—the Seven Years War (1756–63), the American War of Independence (1775–83), and the French Revolution (1789–99)—and briefly analyses the Napoleonic Wars. Each conflict exhibited important geopolitical and strategic continuities as well as important political differences, and was shaped by Britain's domestic conditions and priorities.Less

Congressional Insolvency

Max. M Edling

in A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State

Provides background accounts of political development in the USA from the American War of Independence to the Philadelphia Convention, and establish that, by 1787, Congress was marked by military ... More

Provides background accounts of political development in the USA from the American War of Independence to the Philadelphia Convention, and establish that, by 1787, Congress was marked by military weakness and financial insolvency. Here, an account is given of the efforts of Congress to implement the fiscal clauses of the US Constitution, which shows that the national government created by the Articles of Confederation experienced serious difficulties in its ability to raise money, and in the end failed to raise sufficient money to meet its expenses. The focus of the chapter is on the means by which Congress raised money from the outbreak of the War of Independence up to the Philadelphia Convention, and also on how, one by one, these means were lost, so that by 1787 the insolvency of the national government was total. The first two parts of the chapter describe the attempts of Congress to raise money through fiat (printed) money, loans, and taxes, with the author contending that the Federalists accepted existing restrictions to taxation and formed a tax system that would be able to generate sufficient income for the national government without putting undue pressure on the American people. The last section of the chapter looks at the problem of the public debts run up by Congress and the states during the War of Independence, and at the reasons for the federal assumption of state debts – whether they were democratic or economic – and the reasons given by the Federalists as to why Congress had to resume payment of the public domestic and foreign debt.Less

Ritual Performance: Surrender during the American War of Independence

Daniel Krebs

in How Fighting Ends: A History of Surrender

This case study on German subsidy troops fighting in the American War of Independence understands surrender as a ritual performance, turning defeated soldiers into symbolic capital. If the ritual was ... More

This case study on German subsidy troops fighting in the American War of Independence understands surrender as a ritual performance, turning defeated soldiers into symbolic capital. If the ritual was staged as a rite of passage, as at Saratoga in 1777 and Yorktown in 1781, it provided the vanquished with a safe and respectable transition from the state of armed soldiers to that of unarmed prisoners of war. The victors, in turn, gained an opportunity to demonstrate and communicate their success within their own ranks and a wider public. The observance of rigidly structured rituals guaranteed that the surrender, this dangerous bargain between victors and vanquished, actually succeeded. When rites of passage were missing, as happened at Trenton and many other battles and skirmishes, defeated soldiers were nervous about their future in enemy hands and violence toward prisoners became a distinct possibility.Less

Europe and the American Revolution

R. R. Palmer

in The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800

This chapter discusses the impact of the American Revolution on the democratic and revolutionary spirit in Europe, to the desire, that is, for a reconstitution of government and society. The first ... More

This chapter discusses the impact of the American Revolution on the democratic and revolutionary spirit in Europe, to the desire, that is, for a reconstitution of government and society. The first and greatest effect of the American Revolution was to make Europeans believe, or rather feel, often in a highly emotional way, that they lived in a rare era of momentous change. They saw a kind of drama of the continents. The successful War of American Independence presented itself as a great act of retribution on a cosmic stage. There were many Europeans who said that America would someday, in its turn, predominate over Europe.Less

America as History

Axel Körner

in America in Italy: The United States in the Political Thought and Imagination of the Risorgimento, 1763-1865

This chapter examines early Italian writings on the history of the American War of Independence, including Carlo Botta's History of the War of Independence of the United States of America (1809), ... More

This chapter examines early Italian writings on the history of the American War of Independence, including Carlo Botta's History of the War of Independence of the United States of America (1809), Carlo Giuseppe Londonio's three-volume Storia delle colonie inglesi (1812–1813), and Giuseppe Compagnoni's twenty-nine-volume Storia dell'America (1829). The chapter compares the context in which these works were created to the changing responses they generated during the later course of the Risorgimento. It also draws on these writings to discuss historiography as political thought, arguing that most Italian historians writing about the American Revolution presented the United States as a political reality far removed from European experiences. Even 500 years after the American Declaration of Independence, Italian references to the United States did not necessarily mean an open endorsement of popular sovereignty.Less

Ending the War

Peter J. Marshall

in Remaking the British Atlantic: The United States and the British Empire after American Independence

The manner in which the war came to an end had very important consequences both for the future of Anglo‐American relations and for the impact which the loss of America would have on Britain and its ... More

The manner in which the war came to an end had very important consequences both for the future of Anglo‐American relations and for the impact which the loss of America would have on Britain and its empire. After the loss of an army at Yorktown, British political opinion was no longer supported a war to conquer America. This did not, however, mean that the war as a whole was thought to have ended in total defeat. In fighting against other European powers Britain had begun to hold her own, while America appeared to be in a parlous state close to disintegration. Generous concessions made to the Americans in the peace were therefore widely resented and in retrospect the war came to be seen as much as a triumph of British endurance as a disaster calling for sweeping reforms at home and in the rest of the empire.Less

Empires of Righteousness: Native Americans, Enslaved Africans, and Indians

Peter J. Marshall

in Remaking the British Atlantic: The United States and the British Empire after American Independence

How they treated indigenous peoples was a matter for recrimination between Britons and Americans. During the war Native Americans generally sided with the British as did escaped slaves, some of whom ... More

How they treated indigenous peoples was a matter for recrimination between Britons and Americans. During the war Native Americans generally sided with the British as did escaped slaves, some of whom the British shipped as free people to their colonies. After the war, American land hunger led to Indian wars and dispossession, whereas the British in Canada posed less of a threat to Native peoples. Trading in slaves was condemned widely on both sides of the Atlantic, but the British continued to export huge numbers of Africans, some going to the southernmost American states, where slavery flourished as it did in the British West Indies. Americans denounced British rule in India as rooted in oppression. Many British people had once thought so too, but after the war British opinion increasingly claimed that their Indian empire was based on benevolence.Less

Classical Education and the Early American Democratic Style

Joy Connolly

in Classics and National Cultures

This chapter examines classical rhetoric's central role in the formation of early American cultural identity. It surveys classical education in eighteenth‐ and early nineteenth‐century America, ... More

This chapter examines classical rhetoric's central role in the formation of early American cultural identity. It surveys classical education in eighteenth‐ and early nineteenth‐century America, focusing on the way claims about the universalist appeal of eloquence and certain habits of elocution transformed the exemplary tradition of civic republican virtue into a lived stylistics of democracy. Inculcating a personal style of classical ‘simplicity’ and ‘naturalness’, classical rhetoric both reinforced notions of white male superiority and (through its own universalist claims) opened a way for women and people of colour to claim roles in civic life. In concluding, it argues that, like the imperfect or suicidal heroes dear to colonial and revolutionary Americans, rhetoric's status as an ethically and epistemologically suspect discourse reveals the dissonances and compromises resting at the heart of republican culture.Less

The Challenge of Great Britain

Peter J. Marshall

in Remaking the British Atlantic: The United States and the British Empire after American Independence

The impact of the war varied in severity throughout America, generally leaving the bitterest legacy in the south. After the war Britain was widely conceived still to be hostile to America, trying to ... More

The impact of the war varied in severity throughout America, generally leaving the bitterest legacy in the south. After the war Britain was widely conceived still to be hostile to America, trying to curb her maritime commerce, to detach the new western settlements and even to subvert American morals by exporting luxury goods. Americans resented the slighting way in which their society and institutions were generally portrayed in the British press. Assessments of Britain varied from those like Thomas Jefferson, who saw her as irredeemably corrupted and bent on the overthrow of American republicanism, to Alexander Hamilton, for whom the power of the British state and Britain’s recent economic development were models for America to emulate.Less

Introduction

Peter J. Marshall

in Remaking the British Atlantic: The United States and the British Empire after American Independence

After explaining how the book is divided into sections, one dealing with continuing political hostility and the other with the resumption of transatlantic links, which amounted to the restoration of ... More

After explaining how the book is divided into sections, one dealing with continuing political hostility and the other with the resumption of transatlantic links, which amounted to the restoration of a British Atlantic world, the Introduction sets the scene on the British side. It describes the attitudes during the war of those who had been hostile or friendly to the American cause. It shows how many who had supported the war were ultimately willing to accept that American independence would not necessarily do irrecoverable damage to British interests, although they still remained hostile to a new America after the war. This hostility was to be enduring, while wartime professions of friendship by those who had supported the American cause had little effect on post‐war British policies towards the United States.Less

Archipelagic State Formation, 1578–1783

Jonathan Scott

in How the Old World Ended: The Anglo-Dutch-American Revolution 1500-1800

This chapter looks at how the old world ended through a sequence of republican revolutions. The Anglo-Dutch revolution of 1649–1702 was part of a broader process of Anglo-Dutch-American state-making ... More

This chapter looks at how the old world ended through a sequence of republican revolutions. The Anglo-Dutch revolution of 1649–1702 was part of a broader process of Anglo-Dutch-American state-making spanning two centuries. Across the Atlantic, between the Dutch Revolt and the American War of Independence, a series of states emerged which were new not only in fact, but in nature. These were products of an Atlantic Age of Revolution which is sometimes located only in the eighteenth century, but which had clear origins in the sixteenth. Although the new states in question were three in number, the ‘Age of Revolution’ involved four political and military upheavals of global importance.Less

Crises

in ‘Merely for Money’?: Business Culture in the British Atlantic, 1750–1815

This chapter examines how the business culture in the British Atlantic dealt with the crises or turbulent times the merchants experienced during the period from 1750 to 1815. It explains what ... More

This chapter examines how the business culture in the British Atlantic dealt with the crises or turbulent times the merchants experienced during the period from 1750 to 1815. It explains what constitutes a crisis and describes the changes in business culture brought about by three major events of this period. These include the American War of Independence, the abolition of the British-Atlantic slave trade and the build-up to the Anglo-American War. The analysis shows the resilience of the business culture and highlights the role played by risk, trust, reputation, obligation and networks during the crises.Less

Historical Fiction and the Fractured Atlantic

Fiona Robertson

in Rethinking British Romantic History, 1770–1845

This chapter draws parallels between the reluctance of British Romantic writers to lay claim to the history of the American colonies and more recent attempts to categorize Romanticism as a ... More

This chapter draws parallels between the reluctance of British Romantic writers to lay claim to the history of the American colonies and more recent attempts to categorize Romanticism as a distinctively European intellectual force beginning with the French Revolution. More specifically, the chapter argues that the intertextuality between Charlotte Smith’s novel The Old Manor House (1793), Walter Scott’s Waverley (1814), and his short-story ‘The Tapestried Chamber’ suggests an entirely different plot-line in literary history, in which British defeats during the War of Independence come back to haunt a seminal British historical novel. Such a suggestion not only disrupts the supposedly ‘natural’ history of the development of British historical fiction, but also has significant implications for historical writing in a period of ‘fracture’, which tends to represent American independence not just as a political break but also as a break in a narrative line.Less

English Blood by English Hands

Justin du Rivage

in Revolution Against Empire: Taxes, Politics, and the Origins of American Independence

This chapter shows how the ideological conflict over empire and public finance continued throughout the war. The American War of Independence was one of the most controversial wars in Britain's ... More

This chapter shows how the ideological conflict over empire and public finance continued throughout the war. The American War of Independence was one of the most controversial wars in Britain's history, provoking demands for domestic reform and even flashes of republicanism. In the colonies, the difficulties of forging a new and effective American state meant that conflict was endemic. For both sides, common cultural ties and lingering affection for the British Empire prompted repeated attempts to negotiate a settlement. Those efforts ultimately failed, however. Most colonists were strongly attached to building a new, republican empire in North America, one made possible by the Articles of Confederation. When the war finally ended, Britain's radical Whig prime minister, William Petty, not only granted the new United States a generous peace but sought to reunite the empire along radical Whig lines.Less

The Blessing of Peace: Demobilization

Matthew P. Dziennik

in The Fatal Land: War, Empire, and the Highland Soldier in British America

This chapter discusses the demobilization of the Scottish Gaels. The culmination of hostilities in North America in 1763 and in 1783 hastened the mass demobilization of the inflated wartime strength ... More

This chapter discusses the demobilization of the Scottish Gaels. The culmination of hostilities in North America in 1763 and in 1783 hastened the mass demobilization of the inflated wartime strength of the British Army. From a peacetime strength of nearly thirty-six thousand men, the regular army multiplied fourfold during the Seven Years' War and the War of American Independence. With the end of major conflict, the economic burden of sustaining a large peacetime force resulted in provincial towns becoming inundated with demobilized veterans. More often the object of derision than pity, the demobilized soldier was forced into the public consciousness, which reacted with deep ambivalence toward him.Less

Merchants of Fortune: Negotiating Spanish Neutrality in the American War of Independence

Anna Brinkman

in Economic Warfare and the Sea: Grand Strategies for Maritime Powers, c. 1600-1945

Economic warfare, in the form of commerce predation, was a crucial part of Britain's strategy in the West Indies during the American War of Independence. The rebels relied on a flow of goods provided ... More

Economic warfare, in the form of commerce predation, was a crucial part of Britain's strategy in the West Indies during the American War of Independence. The rebels relied on a flow of goods provided by Spanish, French, Dutch and British merchants which British warships and privateers tried to stem. Britain's peaceful relations with the other three powers in the region depended greatly on being perceived to justly conduct economic warfare without breaking maritime law or bilateral treaties. British strategy during the war, therefore, was a fine line between crippling the rebels through aggressive commerce predation without giving cause for grievance to the other regional powers. The war opened several commercial opportunities in the form of smuggling and privateering. Merchants intentionally blurred the boundaries between enemies and allies to suit a given commercial venture. These blurred boundaries in the Americas were problematic for British ministers and Admiralty officials entrusted with prosecuting the war. Maritime treaties and international law were constantly reinterpreted in an attempt to avoid ruptures with other colonial powers, achieve Britain's war aims, and lend credence to British policy.Less

War and Profit

Paul Cheney

in Cul de Sac: Patrimony, Capitalism, and Slavery in French Saint-Domingue

The plantations of Saint-Domingue and of the Antilles more generally were constantly disrupted by warfare, a natural and predictable activity undertaken by the competitive imperial states that ... More

The plantations of Saint-Domingue and of the Antilles more generally were constantly disrupted by warfare, a natural and predictable activity undertaken by the competitive imperial states that sponsored the Antillean plantation complex. This chapter explores the effects of recurring warfare on the slave population of the Cul de Sac plantation, the organization of labor on the plantation, the marketing and production of sugar, and, finally, the prospects for long-term production. The fact of constant warfare forced planters to adopt a short-term perspective that was not conducive to economically transformative growth on the island. Warfare also exacerbated underlying tensions between competing social groups: free people of color used military service in order to advance their claims for political and civil freedom against an increasingly racially volatile population.Less