Posted on 11/16/2025 4:54:24 PM PST by whyilovetexas111
Could Great Britain have crushed the American rebellion? An expert argues that, while better generalship and politics might have delayed defeat, the odds were stacked against London from the start. Holding a vast, underdeveloped continent with a small population, across an ocean, was a nightmare even for Europe’s strongest navy and army. Saratoga and French intervention made things worse, forcing Britain to fight a global war while trying to subdue the colonies. In the end, distance, imperial overreach, and political inflexibility meant the empire was likely to lose North America sooner or later.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalsecurityjournal.org ...
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That is the way I see it. It is not hard to read the account of us being surprised by the British and trying to withdraw across Long Island Sound, when the entire British fleet showed up. Had there not been that fog, there would have been no escape.
We would have been crushed right there.
The world is full of “Ifs” and “Buts”. If Ifs and Buts were coconuts, we would all be drinking Pina Coladas.
Or, in a more general way, If frogs had wings, they wouldn’t whomp their ass every time they jumped.
Sometimes, things just are.
The Islamic rebels used the exact same guerilla tactics to defeat the Russians and Americans in A-stan. The North Vietnamese did it too. Eventually the imperial powers exhausted and bankrupted themselves and gave up. Successful wars have to be won fast.
The British successfully stopped the Mutiny/Rebellion in 1857 in India. They were brutal. Socialism/Rosseau took root in Britain, and they lost the ability to be brutal in the colonies when they needed to.
This IS their modus operandi, after all.
General Howe was not at the Battle of Yorktown. The British lost because they didn’t have “No Howe”.
You don’t have to “win” a revolt. All you have to do is be enough of a pain in the butt for long enough that the outfit that is being revolted against decides it isn’t worth it.
Bo, because GOD fought for us.
We’d all be speaking Canadian!
It has been losing the revolution since the early 1900s...
Particularly, every time another democrat and/or Marxist was elected to a political office...
The Faunders of the former Republic would have revolted again when the 16th and 17th were enacted...
IMHO, they would have revolted again when Lincoln started the Civil War...
Imagine if he had held out through the night at Ft Necessity/Great Meadow and outlasted/defeated the French who were running out of ammo….with Gen Braddock dead George Washington might have become a British war hero.
Glad he lost though….it helped make him the military leader America needed a decade later
Yup.
Well, at the start of the War of Independence the percentage of those citizens that endorsed the idea of independence remained an apathetic 26%. The 26% consisted mostly of merchants and business owners. As it became evident that Washington had a pretty good chance (with Franklin’s alliance with the French), the deplorable peasants got on board.
Well, the War of 1812 comes to mind.
Yeah, the British lost because they had to wear red and march in a straight line.
It was possible that Britain could have won had George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Benedict Arnold had never been born.
Just found out a couple of my hubs ancestors fought in the Long Island Battle...one was “acquainted” with George Washington, and other Generals.
Stark and his squirrel shooters
America didn’t win the war, the English lost it. Not at all the same thing. The Colonials simply held on until the English had bigger fish to fry and were forced to let them go.
The French lost it, too, even though it wasn’t their war. Support for the American Revolution was one of the major contributors to France’s choking debts. And Louis XVI’s debt crisis was the chief cause of the French Revolution.
Plus the message the French commoners took from the Americans was that it was possible for a ragtag army to throw off even the greatest military power in the world.
They could shoot an acorn out of a squirrel’s paws at 200 yards
Revere was only one of many colonial couriers that night.
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