Surrender of Lord Cornwallis by John Trumbull (Architect of the Capitol)
The American War of Independence freed the 13 British colonies in North America from British rule and set the stage for the United States’ bold experiment in self-government. Fighting raged across the continent for eight years, leaving tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians dead and permanently reshaping the political and social fabric of the Western Hemisphere.
From the start, victory seemed anything but inevitable. A small, loosely organized confederation of independent colonies, with a population of less than two and a half million and no standing army or strong central government, faced one of the wealthiest and most powerful nations on earth—an empire with an experienced professional army, the world’s most formidable navy, and a government able to mobilize vast resources to suppress the rebellion.
Historian Christopher Hamner traces the war from its roots in the crises of the 1770s to the first shots fired at Lexington and Concord, through the surrender of British troops under Gen. Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown, and the Treaty of Paris that followed. Drawing on primary sources, Hamner highlights critical moments of strategy, courage, and contingency, providing rich historical context for the colonists’ improbable victory.
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British Strategy in the American War of Independence
For the American colonists, the War of Independence was the focus of their experience for nearly a decade. For the British, the war to restore Crown authority in the colonies was merely one theater of a wider global struggle for power, influence, and wealth—particularly with their old rival France, where tensions would erupt again into a five-year war in 1778.
Hamner focuses on the evolving British strategy for fighting the war in the colonies, examining some of the massive challenges involved in waging war across the Atlantic Ocean. He analyzes the diplomatic and logistical obstacles Parliament faced in attempting to use military force to restore authority in the colonies and looks at the ways different British commanders waged the war in different colonial theaters.
Additional Sessions of the American Revolution: Part 1 Series
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