How the fuck did they get supplies that could match the fucking British before the French and Spanish started funding...

How the fuck did they get supplies that could match the fucking British before the French and Spanish started funding them in 1778?

The 13 colonies, if they were an independent country, would've been one of the most economically powerful at the time.

>if
We were already independent
We were just being occupied by oppressors

The same way competing European powers equipped the American Indians with free guns and ammo to advance interests or buy favor/trade. It was so effective that most colonial militias were outgunned by the hostile tribes they neighbored while also injecting tons of technically advanced European weapons to the trade networks of North America.

they were losing until the french and spanish intervened

They didn't. They were getting crushed until France (and thus Spain, since Spain was pretty much France's bitch at the time) decided to step in.

>before the French and Spanish started funding them in 1778?

Wrong, retard
That's the vdate of the start of the military intervention, not of the funding

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.

In American military history, there's a phrase that goes on like this: "The National Guard is older than the Nation."

And that's because many National Guard units date their founding to the regiments of colonial militias that the OG colonies set up to defend themselves and to go to war in the Americas when Britain goes to war (i.e. like what happened in the Seven Years War).

When the American Revolution came about those militias turned their guns to the British.

Spain started providing funds, supplies and ammunition long before the official date of intervention and it continued to do so afterwards.

De Grasse fleet f.i stopped at La Habana before going to the Chesapeake to embark 500k gold-pesos to fund the Saratoga campaign while the Spanish fleet patrolled the Caribbean to protect french merchants and colonies there.

Now that's what I call teamwork