Revolutionary War (1775-83): Causes

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Revolutionary War (1775–83): Causes The roots of the Revolutionary War ran deep in the structure of the British empire, an entity transformed, like the British state itself, by the Anglo‐French wars of the eighteenth century. After the fourth of these conflicts, the Seven Years' (or French and Indian) War, the British government tried to reform the now greatly expanded empire. The American colonists resisted, creating a series of crises that culminated in the armed rebellion of 1775. The Imperial Background. With the Glorious Revolution (1688), England's foreign policy took the anti‐French path it followed until 1815—a path that led to four wars before 1775. These conflicts spawned a British nationalism with powerfully anti‐Catholic overtones.…show more content…
The uncommitted, however, comprised approximately two‐fifths of the population, and the outcome of the war ultimately depended on them. As a European conflict and a worldwide war for empire, Britain opposed the United States, France, Spain, and the Netherlands. American social conditions and British strategy shaped the course and determined the outcome of the civil war; but logistical and diplomatic factors governed the war's global phase, and these would strongly influence the nature of American independence. By 1775, the population of British North America was doubling every twenty‐six years. High birth rates and heavy immigration bespoke easily available land, widely distributed among the farming population. The colonists' dispersion and ethnic diversity helped produce the fragmentation and political instability that became pronounced as populations spread westward after the French and Indian War (known in Britain as the Seven Years' War). The easy availability of land weakened American elites; lacking the ability to live off rents, gentlemen also lacked a secure economic and political base. The southern colonies had stable aristocracies, based on slave ownership; but even the greatest planters lived in fear of slave rebellions. Nor did colonial institutions create stability: governments were small, poor, unbureaucratized, and lacked permanent constabularies; neither a unified market economy nor a…show more content…
Howe wanted negotiation more than outright victory because he was not only commander in chief but (together with his brother, Adm. Lord Richard Howe) peace commissioner in America. This schizoid role handicapped him both as military leader and as diplomat; yet events of summer and fall 1776 suggested that he would succeed. After the British evacuated Boston, defeats and disaster filled the rest of 1776. The army Congress had sent to invade Canada in June 1775 collapsed in the summer of 1776. After capturing Montréal, the Continentals failed to take Québec, and were forced to raise their siege when British reinforcements arrived by ship in May. By July, the Americans had retreated to Lake Champlain and—desperately hoping to slow the advance of Gen. Guy Carleton's powerful army on New York—built a small fleet of gunboats. At the Battle of Valcour Island (10 October 1776), Brig. Gen. Benedict Arnold succeeded in stalling Carleton's invasion, but had to withdraw to Fort Ticonderoga. Meanwhile, the fervor of 1775 faded as General Washington tried to transform the Continentals into a regular army capable of holding New York against Howe. He had less than 20,000 troops on Long Island, Manhattan, and the lower Hudson on 25 June 1776 when Howe landed at Staten Island. Howe tried first to negotiate, but found that Congress's representatives,
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