How'd they do it

How'd they do it Veeky Forums, how did a rag-tag volunteer army in need of a fucking shower defeat this global super power?

Did Britain not try hard enough?
Was it not really as powerful as brainlets like me would like to believe?

tl;dr How'd Britain lose the war

Debate.

They had support from the french military.

Waste of dubs.

We had support only from the french navy, and the franks gave us shitty muskets and ammo that didn't fit.

>rag-tag Americans
>Global superpower Britain
This is what burgers ACTUALLY believe

>"gave us"

There is nothing more cancerous than people using this pronoun when talking about historical events. You weren't a minuteman. You're a guy shitposting on a computer.
Now the thing is that France gave a lot of help to the United States, help that was direly needed, even if the americans gave the most for their independence naturally ; There is the naval aspect in which the french navy managed to hurt the english badly (The bailli de Suffren managed to shame the Royal Navy, a fact that was rare in a time where the english used to beat the french on sea). On land, the French army was present with able-bodied men ; At Yorktown there were 8000 french soldiers. There was an active presence on the field and not only to train or equip the american militias ; There were french soldiers who fought against english soldiers.

You know what he meant. He wasn't literally there, but he meant "us" as in the Americans before him.

They're literally called founding FATHERS you cunt

>leaf spotted

OP Here.

Thanks for the info on Yorktown, but keep the tism fest at a minimum.

Agreed

Kek

>Britain in 1776
>global superpower

Lmao

The truth is, the 13 colonies would never have earned their freedom without French intervention

France began providing arms and ammunition as early as 1776. In early 1777, months before Saratoga, the French sent American colonists 25,000 uniforms and pairs of boots, hundreds of cannons, and thousands of muskets -- all stuff that the colonists would've had a hard time surviving without, and all stuff they had no access to on their own.

France provided a whopping 90 percent of the rebels' gunpowder. Without France, the entire American Revolution would have devolved into a bunch of dudes swinging their muskets as clubs within weeks.

Still, the most important French contribution to the revolution was the least visible to Americans. As mentioned, the reason France pampered the Patriots was always selfish. They were out to weaken the British forces -- particularly their naval strength -- in order to take the fight to them, perhaps even conquer them. That's why, for much of the Revolutionary War, the British ships tasked with kicking America's ass had to survive 12 rounds with the French navy before they could even think of crossing the Atlantic. France gleefully fought the British, eventually teaming up with Spain, declaring a war, attacking from all sides, and even setting up an invasion force.

So, when the Colonial army was fighting for dear freedom, history books tend to conveniently forget that they did so with French money, equipment, and backup forces, while France and its other allies were busy pummeling the empire from every other side.

OP again

Anyone able to separate France and Spain here?
Or post the individual empires by 1776, that'd be great too.

>Anyone able to separate France and Spain here?

The entirety of the green in the Americas (except the 13 colonies) is Spain
Louisiana (pic related) was originally French, but Brits decided (for God knows what reasons) to make France give it to Spain (another enemy of Britain) after the French and Indian Wars
The French would only recover it upon defeating Spain in Europe in 1795

Spain was effectively the largest empire in the world by 1776

They provided a ton of organizational and specialized expertise, supplied virtually all gunpowder and artillery required, and bankrolled most of the war effort. The French Navy was also vital in preventing the British from bringing their full strength to bear, and sealing their defeat at Yorktown.

Also, the Charleville was arguably better than the Brown Bess on a lot of counts, and the whole point of having "ammo that didn't fit" was so that the musket could be loaded much more quickly in the heat of battle.

>green

OP
I know this isn't /k/, but do you have any sources for that?

I know that we ( btfo) later based our first service rifle off of it, but I'm still curious about the whole Short Land Pattern VS Charleville argument

>a rag-tag volunteer army
Hardy men, many such as Washington were British veterans.
Riflery was typically very good, a lot of men hunted and the closer you lived to the Appalachians, the more likely it was you had to be prepared for hostile Indians.
Also men were willing to fight unconventionally and of-course had home-field advantage.
>defeat this global super power
Britain was immensely powerful but It's power projection wasn't amazing and it's probably anachronistic to describe it as a superpower. Given the insurrections in Mysore, engagements with the Dutch as well as Spanish and French Imperial support for the rebellion, they were spread very thin.

>Did Britain not try hard enough?
Kind of.
Even influential conservatives such as Edmund Burke were sympathetic to the revolution, likewise a lot of Americans wanted to stay loyal, it was a pretty awkward affair, what was obvious though is that the french wanted to draw the British into a afghan-soviet tier quagmire but even worse because Brits would be killing each-other so the (British) Brits got out at and as it turned out the Ancien regime bankrupted itself giving birth to another broadly Anglo power kek.

>Britain was immensely powerful

It really wasnt

Honestly, now that I've read more about the American revolution, George Washington actually made a lot of dumb mistakes. Fortunately, the British somehow managed to make even more dumb mistakes.

>Britain was immensely powerful but It's power projection wasn't amazing

Rather the contrary
Britain wasn't really powerful (compared to other European countries such as France, Spain, Prussia, Russia, Austria...) but had a pretty decent power projection capacity that allowed it to match these stronger powers when outside of Europe

Yeah, people often don't realize that Britain in the 18th century wasn't nearly as powerful as Britain in the 19th century. The image of power that Britain constructed for itself often gets projected further into the past, creating a false impression that Britain was always a superpower, sort of like how everybody thinks about the Rome and tends to forget that it too started small.

Washington was a tactical retard but strategic genius.

He figured out VERY early that the Americans had little to no chance against the Brits on the open field and only fought battles when he thought it was absolutely necessary.

Ticonderoga only happened because Nathanael Greene had a hard on for the fort.

Fremsh support
This is why france is our GREATEST ALLY

What were they gonna do? Kill all their own colonists? There was really no way out of it for them, they looked like shit to the other European powers by literally slaughtering their own subjects en masse. They could've probably won a drawn out war, but decided it would be more profitable to wash their hands of the mess and just trade with the colonies.

American cultural domination has lead to a huge overrating of British history
Americans love to depict 1776 Britain as a huge superpower with an empire spawning 1/3 of the world simply because it makes their revolution seem more glorious

Same for the meme "redcoats were elite troops", modern (post-WW2) Americans invented it
Redcoats were among the shittiest land army of all european countries (though I can understand that they may still have looked "elite" to a bunch of peasant revolutionaries...) and you'll never find any contemporary account (or pre-WW2 for what matter) praising their quality

Revolutionaries were a minority and a conventional army, it wasnt a popular revolt
It could have been supressed if Britain had had a military powerful enough to beat them on the field (which they didnt)

>He figured out VERY early that the Americans had little to no chance against the Brits on the open field and only fought battles when he thought it was absolutely necessary.

That's not entirely true. He knew that fighting a purely defensive war probably made the most sense, but he frequently broke his own rules and tried to have full-on aggressive battles when he really didn't have to. For example, he tried to make some sort of huge stand in New York that would have been a disaster if Britain had actually attacked at that moment. But for some reason, the Brits kept delaying their attack, and eventually they delayed long enough that Washington had time to come to his senses and pull out. To be fair, though, a lot of the truly stupid decisions came from the Continental Congress, and Washington usually ended up following them simply because he believed that the military had to be subordinate to the civilian government. He got better with dealing with Congress as the war went on.

About a 1/3 of colonists supported the revolution.
They kicked our asses in the open field up until France started laying into them, Saratoga was only a victory because 3 great military commanders joined forces to undergo a multi-stage operation to win.

There were 8 wars between Britain and France in the 18th century prior to the American Revolution.
France won none of them.
Britain was the most powerful country in the world in the late 18th century. The Financial, Industrial and Naval advantage the UK had over all other nations was already stark though i'll concede that gap only grew in the proceeding century.

OP
Anyone gonna refute?

I'm feeling kinda swayed.

OP here.

I got some new questions.

>what different effects did each the regions (New England, Mid-Atlantic and South) have on the war?

>which battle, other than Saratoga, was THE most important battle of the war?

>rag-tag
Supported by a superpower, and led by several experienced generals.

>volunteer army
Like most 18th Euro armies... Though if you were not a soldier, you were legally required to fall out for militia service.

>in need of a fucking shower
What?

>defeat this global super power?
>Did Britain not try hard enough?
>Was it not really as powerful as brainlets like me would like to believe?

They were still reeling from just fighting a war against the French. The Seven Years war drained them greatly, and while they turned a blind eye to the colonies for decades -we got away with a lot of shit because we still made the mother country so much money- They really needed to have the colonies pay up and pull their weight after nearly bankrupting the empire on a war to defend them.

...And specialists (sappers, heavy cav, engineers), officers to train us, uniforms (which is incredibly important for many reasons), cold cash....
>Charleville
>Shitty Musket
>Ammo that didn't fit
So you don't know shit about blackpowder. Military muskets used undersized balls to load quicker, even with fouling. The paper cartridge acts as the wad. What you lose in accuracy, you make up for in reliability and speed. Accuracy also doesn't matter when you fire in volley: You aim at a direction, fire in unison, and anything in that direction has a very bad day.

Preach it.

Professional historic military interpreter here: Barrel bands made for a sturdier and more robust, if heavier weapon. The appreciable difference between a .69 ball from a Bess, and a .64 ball from a Charlie are moot. Its still a slug of lead the diameter of your finger being flung at subsonic speeds. Pic related. With a 100 grain, ff load, the impact against an unarmoured target was nearly identical.

Forgot the pic. Derp.

Because william wallace and the merry men had more FREEEEEEDOOOOOMMM AMERIKEK FUCK YEAH WHOOOEW, SUPORT ISRAEL FDJDHDH

France

>french
>sends 7k troops
>hurr durr they saved us
sure

OP here

Gropey the hero, thanks man.

No prob bro.

Link to /k/ thread about weapons if anyone's curious.

Don't tell admins

Honestly, Britain was in trouble the moment the revolt became self-sustaining. Actually occupying the thirteen colonies would have taken hundreds of thousands of men and be way more expensive than America could ever hope to be worth. The colonists didn't need to win, just not lose. Britain could have fought on longer, but there was no real point; everyone remembers the surrender at Yorktown, but not the fact that the British had a garrison in New York that was way larger than Cornwallis's lost force. It's a classic case of an asymmetric non-total conflict where superior commitment wins out over superior resources. It wasn't the first and it wouldn't be the last.

Was there ever a point after 1783 that Britain had a realistic chance of retaking the colonies? It seems like Britain accepted pretty quickly that they were never going to get the colonies back.

No. Even ignoring the other commitments that Britain had all over the world, the divisions that marked the Revolution itself faded pretty quickly once the war ended and the most hardcore loyalists went to Canada. You're now talking about invading and occupying an area that's roughly as big as continental Europe for god knows how long. Even if the Americans don't lift a finger in open battle, you're still talking a colossal expenditure and needing to probably replace thousands of troops a year just from losses to disease and desertion. It's quite possible if the right diplomacy happens that Great Britain can win a war, but they'll never win the peace.

Gropey! Thought you died or got banned or something. Glad to have you back mate.

Then explain how Britain was able to conquer India so easily. India is even bigger than the US (in terms of population).

Britain never outright conquered India. The EIC stepped into a role of playing enforcer for various Indian sub-states, and eventually parlayed that into economic and then political dominance. They didn't conquer India so much as supported one group of Indians to conquer the rest of them. The Presidency armies were roughly 80% Indian by overall troop count, even if the doctrine and leadership positions were all British.

But to pull something like that requires political divides you can stick wedges into. When you have a religiously divided subcontinent with a long tradition of independent states who all hated each other and chafe under a dying Mughal Empire, they're easy to find. Late 18th century early 19th century America? Not so much.

The British did not attain supremacy until about the 1830's.

The British had considerable financial and industrial resources, but these were not overwhelming when the UK was still in the early phases of industrialization. Even in the 18th century, Qing China was still the most economically dominant polity in the world.

Naval power was considerable but not overwhelming: it could still be challenged up until the Battle of Trafalgar, and could be defeated under local conditions. Militarily, the British could be stomped by any other European power on land. The British Army, though well-supplied, was minuscule, and heavily relied on its allies to do the bulk of the fighting.

That the British won so many wars against France is not a testament to their power. Rather, it is more that the British tended to choose their allies well, and did not share a land border with any European power.

Funded by the french

well the UK had to ship men and supplies across an ocean

Get a load of this retard

>Spanish Succession
>allied victory
Not sure where you found that shit, but that's false
The noble France supported became king

>Carnatic Wars
France took part in like two battles (never with more than 100s of troops) in the three wars
Claiming it was a victory against France rather than against these shitty Indian states shows the state of British desperation

>Jacobite rising
France didnt even get involved militarily

>Seven Years War
Only one I can kinda give you, although Prussia did most of the job and Britain barely defeated an heavily outnumbered French force in America (and took a decade for that)

Btw, outside of the micro colonial wars in which France barely took part, there are only three real wars on your pic, and all three are alliance wars (the First one being Alliance vs France alone)
Care to find me any war Britain won 1vs1 against France?
Because I believe your post was aimed at proving Britain's military might, right?
Right now it just proves its capacity to chose good allies

try fighting a rebellion in another continent that you control in those days with your neighbour supporting them

Foreign assistance or not, there was really no way for the British to hold the 13 Colonies. Their population was big enough to support meaningful resistance and independence was a relatively popular notion. Even if they won all the battles, the best case scenario for the British is a costly occupation. Given that there was significant political opposition to the war in Britain, it seems unlikely that they'd shoulder that burden for long, especially if the French, Dutch, or Spanish exploited the distraction.

>France fucking bankrupts itself to spite Britain and support their rebelling colony
>"ACKSHULLY"

neck yourself

Yeah
Even if France didnt support the merilards they is a high chance of another uprising

Yuropoor detected. Serfdom never existed in the American colonies. Don't project your own loser ancestry on others

>Britain never conquered India

Burgers should be banned from Veeky Forums

Only a small portion of French debts came from the American revolutionary war
It was expensive to France but the idea of the American revolution bankrupting France is exaggerated, French bankruptcy came from inherent institutional problems in the French taxation and spending system

to clarify
1.3 billion french livres were debt from the French revolution
their total debt was 12 billion
thus debt from the american war was a small sum of the total French debt
either way the crisis was reaching its breaking point, with or without the American revolution