Wes Frank
Masters in American History from Northwestern UniversityOct 21

After Britain’s defeat in the American Revolutionary War, did Britain
ever plan another invasion to take back the lost colony or did they
consider the defeat final?
By the end of the War of the American Revolution, the British leaders
who had grimly pursued the attempt to reconquer the Thirteen Colonies by
force were discredited and driven from power. The new generation of
British leaders that replaced them comprehended that the task of
conquering and subduing a nation of two million free citizens on the
farther side of an ocean was simply beyond British resources.

Veteran British military officers supported this view:

In one of the first published histories of the American War of
Independence by a British army officer, Charles Stedman wrote that “men
were obliged to conclude, either that a force of Great Britain was
ill-directed, or that no invading army, in the present enlightened
period, can be successful in a country where the people are tolerably
united.” Although critical of some of the decisions of the commanders,
he argued that the experience of the southern campaign had demonstrated
as “a fact beyond all contradiction” that the war was unwinnable. He
recalled the process of subduing Georgia and South Carolina. He
remembered when “the British commanders in those provinces had been
uniformly successful in all general actions they fought, and had not in
a single instance been defeated,” yet their successes achieved nothing
but the retention of Savannah and Charleston, which “facts naturally led
to this inference, that it was madness to persist in an expensive war,
in which even success failed to produce its natural consequences.”

O'Shaughnessy, Andrew Jackson. The Men Who Lost America: British
Leadership, the American Revolution and the Fate of the Empire. Yale
University Press.

Something like a fifth of the British trading economy had been tied up
in what was now the United States in 1775 and a fifth of all British
ships were built in American yards before the war. A lot of that market
could be reclaimed through peaceful trade. The new American nation was
not interested in European power politics, so it was not going to be
allying with France or Spain in the near future. The colonials had
contributed a share of the British armies that had served in the wars
with France and Spain in the Caribbean, but that could be worked around.
The hope of some British thinkers, like James Burke, that the North
American empire would provided a trans-Atlantic source of manpower and
resources on the scale of the Spanish and Portuguese empires was dashed,
but Britain had other assets and retained its priceless advantage of
being able to tap into European wealth while avoiding being a
battleground for European wars.

The future of the British Empire lay in India and Africa, where
provinces of peasant farmers and pastoralists used to being ruled by
monarchs and chieftains could be subdued by a small British army and
rational administration. If conquest could be done at reasonable cost,
British industry would the true engine of British wealth, one that would
anchor imperial growth around the world for another century without
serious competition.

Whenever British leaders faced the issue of dealing with a large,
educated population with governing structures comparable to Britain’s,
as in China or Japan, they settled for trade advantages rather then
direct rule. When they created strong middle-class setter colonies like
they had once created in North America, as in Canada, Australia, and
South Africa, they allowed local self-rule. And, of course, when, in the
20th Century, India and the British Asian and African colonies created
modern societies on the same model, the British Empire had to concede
the same to them.

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29 comments from
Dave Hiatt
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Dave Hiatt
· October 23
It was, much like the US in Vietnam. The rebellion in North America did
NOT have a military solution, the issues were political. But the
politician’s were unable / unwilling to recognize that THEY had to do
the hard work, so they just threw the ball over the wall to the military
and said “fix it”.

This was an impossible task. As you point out, even in the South which
was more amenable to staying in a union with Britain, Cornwallis learned
simply marching through the countryside and winning battles did not
pacify it. The locals just waited, let the Army pass, and they picked
off the stragglers and supply trains.

You can win all the individual and tactical engagements and still be
losing the war, because the “war” is about political issues not specific
military deployments.

The US encountered the same thing in Vietnam, the US Army could take any
ground it wanted and hold it for as long as it wanted. But to what end?
When it left, everything went back to the way it was. The Vietnam War
and the American Revolution did not have military solutions so were by
definition “unwinnable” in a military sense.

The military can help create conditions that can allow the politicians
to work hard at addressing the issues, but the real effort has to come
from the politicians realizing this is they problem not the military’s.
Without that, nothing is going to work.

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David Jacques
· November 7
All hostilities have political origins. The statement that they have no
military solutions is incomplete. The full version is that the military
solution would be unacceptable by modern standards. Examples are what
the Romans did to the Picts near Hadrian’s Wll and to Carthage.

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David Jacques
· November 2
You’re making generalisations that are quite obviously nonsense. Not an
objective view of history. Britain went to war with China, as even a US
history graduate ought to know. There was never any chance Britain could
retain mastery of a continent with its relatively tiny army and the
country's top generals told George III so. Carleton in Canada stayed out
of it as far as he could. GIII managed to get Lord North to do his
bidding even though his lordship disliked government and everything to
do with it. Britain won the battles but lost the war - like the US in
Vietnam and Afghanistan. For the rest of your remarks - the flag
followed trade, not vice versa. Britain used its own wealth, not
European wealth, in creating its empire. Britain had far better
financial mechanisms and policies than e.g. France, which is why Britain
was always able to come out on top against that much larger nation. At
the time the global war - it could in many ways be considered a world
war - was considered an unmitigated British victory. The only aspect of
war Britain always had to win was the naval and Britain virtually
obliterated the French fleet that made the Yorktown surrender
inevitable. The sugar islands were in any event considered much more
important by al parties except the American colonists.

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Wes Frank
· November 2
“At the time the global war was considered an unmitigated British victory.”

By whom? The ministers responsible for the war were forced out of
office. George III threatened to abdicate from the disgrace of losing
the war. His emotional health never recovered from the disaster. When he
was old and senile and confined, witnesses heard him would having
discussions with Lord North over strategy in the American war.

The “victorious” monarch in 1782:

When he was finally forced to yield to American independence, George III
drafted a letter of abdication to Parliament. Claiming that all his
difficulties in America had arisen from “his scrupulous attachment to
the Rights of Parliament,” he spoke of his devotion to the British
Constitution. He complained of the “sudden change in Sentiments” in what
he pointedly referred to as “one Branch of the Legislature,” which had
“totally incapacitated Him from either conducting the War with effect,
or from obtaining any Peace but on conditions which would prove
destructive to the Commerce as well as essential Rights of the British
Nation.” With much sorrow, he announced that he found that he could be
of no further utility to his country, which had driven him “to the
painful step of quitting it for ever.” He therefore resigned “the Crown
of Great Britain and the Dominions appertaining thereto to His Dearly
Beloved Son and lawful Successor, George Prince of Wales,” who he hoped
might be more successful in his endeavors for the prosperity of the
British Empire.” His letter of abdication was never submitted.

On December 5, 1782, George III had to give a speech to Parliament
acknowledging the independence of the United States of America. As he
read the word “independent,” his voice was “constrained.” According to
Elkanah Watson, a young American merchant, George III “hesitated” and
“choked” over the words “free and independent states” but otherwise
delivered the speech with “ill grace.” George III spoke candidly of
having sacrificed his own wishes to the opinion of his people. Although
sympathetic to him, Nathaniel Wraxall described the speech as “among the
most singular compositions ever put in the mouth of a British
sovereign.” It included passages more suitable to the spirit and
language of a moralist or a sage than of a monarch. It had a kind of
invocation or prayer in the middle in which George III implored divine
intervention to avert the calamities that might befall the former
colonies in consequence of their becoming independent states and
repudiating monarchical power. Wraxall wrote that the speech was the
subject of mirth and satire, while Edmund Burke called it
“insufferable.” The personal blow of conceding independence was made
more tragic by the death of George III’s favorite son, the four-year-old
Octavius.70