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The factors that caused the American colonies to break away and then defeat the British can be summed up in two words, France and distance. Without either, independence would have been impossible. Britain deemed it necessary to tax the colonies to help pay for its war with France. This united Americans against British rule and without the French Navy, the revolution would likely have been lost. Americans resented being taxed by a government that had little interest in the welfare of its subjects and allowed them no representation. Many could not understand why a smaller nation on the other side of the world was controlling a larger group of colonies.
Distance also played a part in the psychological separation from Britain and was a military logistics problem for what was the greatest military power in the world. The United States owes its existence to France both directly and indirectly.
By the beginning of the Revolution, the wars against France fought on both sides of the Atlantic had burdened Britain with the massive national debt. To ease the national debt, Parliament imposed taxes on the colonists believing it only fair that they bear part of the expenses incurred by the British military in protecting them from Indian attacks and French invasions. The Stamp Act taxed paper goods sent to the colonies.
Along with the tea tax, the Stamp Act was only one of the more infamous of these laws, rather than one of two. The colonists thought taxation without representation in the British government to be unjust and openly protested these laws which led to hostilities between British troops and the Massachusetts Minutemen in 1775. This and other conflicts with the ‘Red Coats’ led to colonists forming the Continental Congress which immediately created the Continental Army and in 1776, signed the Declaration of Independence (The American Revolution, 2006).
In 1778, the French had formally recognized the independence of the U.S. and signed a treaty that created a military and commercial alliance with the new country. Thereafter, “French support for the U.S. with arms, clothing, and money was open rather than clandestine, and (George) Washington’s great hope for French naval assistance off the American coast would soon be realized” (Encyclopedia, 2004). Many historians suggest that without the help of the French, the new nation would have stood little chance of prevailing. (The American Revolution, 2006).
The British lacked the experience of fighting protracted military conflict thousands of miles from home. Logistics worked to the advantage of the Americans. The Continental Army had ready access to resources produced locally such as food and additional manpower but the British were operating more than 3,000 miles from home and on unfamiliar territory. The British were not well prepared to fight a war when hostilities began in the colonies.
Though this deficiency was quickly and efficiently corrected, the Americans had been given a head-start which ultimately impacted the outcome of the war. Long-distance logistic difficulties at the beginning and ending periods of the war disrupted the cohesiveness of the British military and created strategic nightmares. By the time orders were received in America, the scenario on the battlefield had likely changed which gave a clear advantage to the Americans. These dynamics “forced the British Army to fight a guerilla war, the only kind of war that the upstart United States could hope to win” (Tokar, 1999).
Had Britain not been at war with France, the entire dynamics of the situation would have been different. The colonies would not have been taxed therefore would have been less motivated to revolt and the French would not have been compelled to send their ships to America. The psychological factor of distance may have played a role in the colonies breaking away from Britain at some point in the future but not at that time. Simply put, if Britain was on friendly terms with France, the history of the Revolutionary War would have been written very differently, if at all, and at least in another time period.
Works Cited
(The) American Revolution. Military. (2006). Web.
“Encyclopedia: American Revolutionary War.” The History Channel. (2004). Web.
Tokar, John A. “Logistics and the British Defeat in the Revolutionary War.” (1999). Army Logistician. Web.
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