The Men Who Lost America: BritishLeadership, The American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire
(The Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-C) by Andrew Jackson
O'Shaughnessy (Yale University Press, 2013, 480 Pages, $37.50)
approaches the history of the American Revolution from a perspective
few Americans ever get a chance to see, understand, or appreciate.
The reader is introduced to a number of military and political
personalities usually seen as representing a tyrannical government
far removed from nation growing out of thirteen separate colonies
owing allegiance to the British crown, governed lightly by mother
land dependent upon it as a market as well as a source of raw
materials who primarily sought to garner enough taxes from it to
recoup the costs of maintaining a presence there and protecting its
frontiers from marauding Indians, the French, and the Spanish. It
asks and answers the questions “Were we a good as we think were?”
and “Were they as bad as we've been led to believe?”
In order to tell the story through the
lives of a number of British leaders, the author must cover much of
the same ground from slightly different perspectives several times,
making the narrative somewhat repetitive. By looking at King George
III, Parliament, and several military and naval leaders, he details
the problems each faced as well as the commitments they sought to
maintain as they undertook to serve the interests of their nation. He
also pictures the degree to which many of those men felt deep
sympathy towards America, led important and productive careers which
were illustrious before the Revolution and continued afterwards, and
were thoughtful, resourceful, skilled men operating in a difficult
economic, military and political environment. He shows the degree to
which heated political rhetoric and personal ambition, so familiar to
us in our our own sharply divided political environment today, often
does not serve the purposes of effective problem solving.
King George III
In TheMen Who Lost America, the
narrative reveals King George III as a knowledgeable and thoughtful
person who believed strongly in the prerogatives of his position and
the primacy of the British Empire. He viewed retaining the colonies
as essential to maintaining the strength of his Empire. He was,
nevertheless, aware of where his political strength lay, demanding
and earning the respect and obedience of his ministers in the
government. His early career shows him as a man of the enlightenment
with many of the beliefs and attitudes similar to those fomenting
revolution in America. He was deeply conservative, personally frugal,
relatively approachable, acting as the defender of national honor and
the role of the monarchy. He was the last politically powerful
monarch in Britain. Lord North, George III's Prime Minister through
much of long reign, emerges as a brilliant debater and parliamentary
tactician filled with doubts about the war and his ability to conduct
it. He sought to resign from the government a number of times due to
his doubts about pursuing the American adventure.
Military
and Naval figures like brothers General and Admiral Howe, Burgoyne,
Clinton, Lord Cornwallis, Admiral Rodney, and others are shown as
innovative and creative military leaders who had deep experience and
great expertise. Contrary to what we are often taught, the British
military had developed fighting skills to counter the guerrilla style
warfare of the rebels, were well trained, and often quite effective.
With few exceptions, British military won more battles than they
lost, successfully capturing Boston, New York, Philadelphia,
Charleston, and Savannah. Their success, however, often became a
problem as they were not provided with the personnel or material
resources to maintain garrisons in all the places they occupied.
Their major losses (Saratoga, Kings Mountain, and Yorktown) occurred
where their supply lines were stretched too far. Meanwhile, George
Washington brilliantly fought a war of attrition. The book emphasizes
the lack of unanimity in prosecuting the war at all levels of power
and influence in Britain. There were mixed levels of support in
Parliament, the military, the press, and amongst the populace for
what the British saw as a civil war.
Frederick Lord North
The
British loss of America was a result of a number of causes. The size
of the American territory made it impossible for the British Army and
Navy to occupy and blockade the entirety of the continent given their
scarce and divided resources. They believed they would triumph with
the aid of what they believed to be significant loyalist support,
which turned out not to be present and to become less fervent as the
war continued and the intrusiveness of the British military became
more odious. The Revolution became increasingly popular in America as
time wore on. The unconventional warfare waged by citizen soldiers
became increasingly difficult to oppose. The increasing effectiveness
of the central government added strength to the American cause. The
British forces were active in too many many theaters (America, the
Caribbean, India, Gibraltar, France, Spain, etc.) to concentrate
sufficient forces in America and their supply lines back to Britain
and to the beleaguered Caribbean islands were too long. The
increasing power of the press in England weakened support for a
foreign war, while General Washington's skill wore down the British
forces in America. Finally, O'Shaughnessy suggests that the loss of
America preserved the rest of the British Empire in India, Africa,
the Middle East, and the Caribbean into the 20th
century.
Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy
Author
Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy, a dual citizen of both the United
States and Great Britain, is the Saunders Director of the Robert H.
Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello and
Professor of History at the University of Virginia, providing him
with a unique perspective from which to view the development and
history of both countries. While the title of the book and its
organization emphasizes the men (and they were all men) involved in
the struggle to maintain a united British Empire, O'Shaughnessy
recognizes and discusses at length the complex and difficult
Geo-political environment these men had to function in, their
character and ability, and the problems of communications and
resources which made the Revolution such an earth shaking event. By
structuring his narrative around the lives, careers, and
personalities of ten individual British leaders, he has created a
difficult to solve problem that tends to make his narrative somewhat
repetitive. Nevertheless, this highly detailed and fully annotated
volume is worthwhile reading for the general reader interested on
gaining a new perspective into the roots of America. It is also
instructive in helping to understand today's problems as it shows a
nation stretched to the breaking point trying to manage world crises
in too many theaters.
The Men Who Lost America: BritishLeadership, The American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire
(The Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-C) by Andrew Jackson
O'Shaughnessy (Yale University Press, 2013, 480 Pages, $37.50) is a
highly readable account offering an unusual perspective for the
reader of American history. I read the book as a pre-publication
galley provided to me by the publisher through Net Galley. I read it
on my Kindle.
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