IRG member and KCL PhD student Andrew Exum is raising hackles over at the Guardian’s Comment is Free
At the moment, Americans are reliving their revolutionary era through HBO’s slick new mini-series on founding father John Adams. But this interest in the American Revolution surely opens the door onto an interesting thought experiment: What would have happened had the British army applied contemporary counterinsurgency doctrine against those pesky colonists in the 18th century?
This question is one currently being asked by several smart US army and Marine Corps officers who have taken their experiences fighting insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan and applied them to historical analysis of other American wars. In his paper [PDF] on British counterinsurgency efforts in the American south during the revolution, US Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Paul Montanus notes with incredulity that while the British army garrisoned over 15,000 troops to defend New York City, only 8,500 men were left to execute counterinsurgency operations in the south. That meant the British had a troops-to-population ratio of 2:195 – far below what most contemporary military planners would deem necessary to fight an effective counterinsurgency campaign.
I’d not venture a strong opinion on the matter–not my area really. It strikes me, however, as the descendant on one side of United Empire Loyalists (aka ex-American colonists)) who fought against the Revolution and fled to Canada after it, that there was quite a bit of loyalty to the British Empire which was eroded/squandered. Doesn’t this make the troop ratio something of a red herring? Anyway, it’s too bad we lost.
Exum notes that his ancestor Colonel Benjamin Exum fought the British in the mountains of North Carolina which is rather cool. It’s nice to be in the winning side. My Empire Loyalist ancestors, on the other hand, were French Huguenots who fled France to America via a stint in Yorkshire. Twice-refugees, in other words; and intercontinental refugees at that–not bad for the 18th century. Another ancestor, Henry Lapp, fought the Americans in various places in Upper and Lower Canada and the northern states in the War of 1812. He narrowly escaped death in 1813 when they attacked York. He was the only survivor of an artillery battery of 12 men–the rest were killed by an explosion of the cartridge chest hit by an American shell.
War of 1812. Now there’s an interesting bit of historical parallelism, Andrew. (Ps. You lost that one, you know?) Thomas Jefferson is reputed to have said ‘the acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us the experience for the attack on Halifax, the next and final expulsion of England from the American continent.’ Canadian nationalism (such as it is) has strong roots in the idea that they showed in 1812 that they could and would fight for their country against American aggression and hubris. We can be quite chippy about it actually. Evidence: this hagiographical site on General Sir Isaac Brock (’Canada’s Originial War Hero’) where you can find, believe it or not, a Brock action figure(!). Brits hardly remember the War of 1812 which might have something to do with Andrew Jackson and New Orleans (mutter, mutter) but for Canadians it’s a big deal because we kicked American ass and you lost. Did I just drop all scholarly pretense, use vulgarity and bold at that? You see what I mean? Chippiness. And I haven’t lived in Canada for over a decade. Sadly, speaking of chips, we failed to defend this mighty icon of Canadiana against American incursion some centuries later. But I digress…
Ah well, the Anglosphere’s a big happy family now.
Tuesday, 1, April, 2008 at 8:32 pm |
“War of 1812. Now there’s an interesting bit of historical parallelism, Andrew. (Ps. You lost that one, you know?) ”
Well, I dispute that we lost the War of 1812. It can certainly be argued that we didn’t win it, in deed, that no one won it, because some feel it didn’t resolve anything.
The primary cause of the War of 1812 was the habit the Brits had of stopping US merchant shipping and impressing the crew. “Impressing”, that’s Royal Navy for “kidnapping and forcing into service.” The War of 1812 stopped that.
After the War of 1812 there were also no questions that the US would be allowed to continue to expand west. Granted, exanding north was out of the question, but conquoring Canada was never the goal.
As for “kicking our ass”, I remind you that there is a Thames in Ontario, and we kicked your ass there.
Tuesday, 29, July, 2008 at 6:35 pm |
There were many reasons for Mr. Madison’s prompting of Congress to agree in declaring war against the United Kingdom (UK). The next day, when Madison signed it into law, Napoleon marched on Moscow. The timing generally, must of seemed quite convenient for the then President, with the UK then embroiled up to her neck in a 19 year war with a country that would eventually be hell bent on forcing its will on other countries (no reference with the current Bush administration intended).
The concern of Madison’s administration and anyone affected by the RN’s practice of impressment, was of course real and justified but lets not let it obscure other reasons for Madison’s opportunistic shenanigans. Madison’s own internal political instability (including his party), the wish to remove British influence over those pesky Indians and finally to expand American markets were all other convenient motivations for Madison, but were of course, not so nearly acceptable to reasonable people, to justify a war.
Impressment, although obviously hugely unpleasant for those caught under it, was designed to fulfil a need brought about by those murderous French Republicans and then later, Napoleon. At times, the UK was very much alone in being able or willing to resist them with the Royal Navy stretched to the limit. In the end, unfortunately impressment was for the greater good, in helping Europe free itself from French imperialism.
As asserted by an American historian, Donald R. Hickey, the US had ‘…. won most of its wars, often emerging with significant concessions from the enemy. But the War of 1812 was different. Far from bringing the enemy to terms, the nation [USA] was lucky to escape without making extensive concessions itself. The Treaty of Ghent … said nothing about the issues that had caused the war and contained nothing to suggest that America has achieved her aims [whatever they were]. Instead, it merely provided for returning to the status quo ante bellum – the state that was before the war’.1
1. Hickey, Donald R. (1990), The War of 1812 (Chicago: The University of Illinois Press), p. 2