They couldn’t fight the war so far away; they resorted to sending mercenaries, they couldn’t even hold Boston (probably the closest American city to London), and they had to defend Canada rather than use it as an offensive post. Holding the coastal areas of the US simply wasn’t a winning strategy; the “hinterland” to which you refer not only provided the colonists with everything they needed, but denied the British the very resources for which they ever wanted the colonies to begin with.
Can you envision any scenario under which Britain could win? Were they going to fill the colonies all the way to the frontier with redcoats? Once the colonists were armed the ensuing years were a mere formality; they could have won 100 more battles after Yorktown and would still lose the war.
“They couldn’t fight the war so far away; ...
Can you envision any scenario under which Britain could win? ...”
I beg the forum to forgive me. The “cities-hinterland” comparison reached my ears as something of a joke (apparently, kearnyirish2 missed the word “wittily” in the first phrase of that single-sentence paragraph): hadn’t intended it to be a summation of AWI that was both accurate and complete. However funny they get, one-liners have to leave out a lot.
Imperial Britain not only could fight a war “so far away”, they had recently done so with enormous success, not once but twice: the Seven Years War, ending in 1763, during which they terminated French presence in North America; and they had attained victory on the subcontinent of India in 1755 - a locale somewhat farther from the British Isles than the North American colonies.
The Continental Army never had “everything needed.” I will risk another generalization here, by describing the first two years of AWI thus: Americans run out of ammunition, and the British take the field. The first time that didn’t happen was Monmouth, summer 1778.
After the American invasion of Canada was driven back in 1776, there was no need for the British to defend it in any strength. Instead, Canada became the launch point for the three-pronged invasion of New York, intended to split the New England Colonies from the Middle and Southern Colonies.
The British were fortunate in having Sir Guy Carleton in the post of Governor-General of Quebec and then all of Canada; possessing possibly the finest strategic mind serving under the British flag, he also was a talented diplomat, convincing the Quebecois to avoid aiding the Americans. “Savior of Canada” is not an inaccurate honorary title; he finished AWI as commander-in-chief of all British forces in North America. Had senior British political leaders been possessed of better foresight, they’d have appointed him to overall command in 1775 and there is every chance the American Rebellion would have petered out to become a minor footnote in history.
The employment of German mercenaries meant less than kearnyirish2 thinks it did. It was a common practice during the 18th century.
We don’t have to imagine a scenario in which the British might have won AWI. They nearly did on several occasions. The resolute toughness of the Continental soldiers, ably led by sharp-minded and canny officers (George Washington, Nathanael Greene, Benjamin Lincoln, Richard Montgomery, Anthony Wayne are just a few better-known names) played a central role, but all of the sacrifices of the troops who actually marched and fought would have meant little, had France, Spain, and Holland not become involved.
If that wasn’t clear enough, try this: Americans did not win on their own. And modern-day Americans need to stop patting themselves on the back, smug in the mistaken assumption that they did.
The narrative about AWI that paints the whole affair as Divinely ordained, providential, miraculous, inevitable, and all that was invented by religious leaders and propagandists over the half-century following the establishment of independence. Some of it might be of use as moral indoctrination for schoolchildren, but it intersects with the historical record only coincidentally.
As a purely technical aside - and an attempt to return this portion of the thread to the original topic - American successes were greatest, and the American spirit shone at its brightest, when the branches of armed forces, naval and land, worked together to accomplish joint objectives. For more complete descriptions of how this was done, see _George Washington’s Secret Navy_, _Benedict Arnold’s Navy_, and _George Washington’s Great Gamble_ by James L Nelson. _Rise and Fight Again_ by Charles Bracelen Flood describes one incident where it went wrong, badly. A series of lessons about functional specialization in the military establishment that might actually make the grade as “timeless.”