A Narrative History of the American Revolution in the Grand Style

Rick Atkinson’s choice to end “The Fate of the Day,” the second volume of his Revolution Trilogy, with the Patriot surrender of Charleston in 1780, their largest loss of troops during the war, is both wise and arresting. This is narrative history in the grand style, with both sweep and apt pen portraits. That moment underlined the difficulty of the task facing the Patriots, and Atkinson’s choice of it as a breaking point prepares the reader for the drama of the next volume to come, with Yorktown to serve a counterpoint to Charleston.

Throughout this book, Atkinson also manages well the bringing together of a number of strands. In contrast with some past treatments, due agency is here given to France, and the war outside North America receives attention. Indeed, linked to both, there is an understanding of the problems the British faced when it came to their priorities.

This is all to the good, and Atkinson also gives the reader a skillful discussion of battles. He manages well a very wide range of sources, primary as well as secondary, and presents an interleaving of episodes and themes, with good maps and welcome illustrations—including helpfully noting in some cases when much later paintings have been used, although that is not done for all illustrations.

There is a good deal here to appreciate, indeed enjoy, and the work will have a large readership. That of course means that the reviewer should face the task, one that so many dodge, of also drawing attention to possibly less happy aspects. There are two major ones. Atkinson is well aware of them, so we are talking about a matter of emphasis rather than omission, although, of course, the first can rank as a form of the second. First, the American Revolution was a civil war, not only in the British Empire and in British North America, but also within the Thirteen Colonies. This was not a case of “the Americans,” the term employed by Atkinson for the fighters who were against the “loyalists” (note the absence of a capital), but of Patriots versus Loyalists, both also competing for the support of the many who were neutral or only very moderately committed. All of these inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies can be called Americans if such a term is to be employed. To annex the term for the Patriots is to adopt a misleading teleology.

The treatment of nation-building presents a similar teleological issue, as does the figure of George Washington. A country was created, and Washington’s abilities were to be appreciated. Yet both were somewhat unclear at the juncture treated by the book. The brave hopes of 1775 and 1776 seemed tarnished and tentative by 1780. The war appeared to be moving toward an impasse, with the Patriot cause dependent on an unreliable France and a hostile Spain, while discontent was increasing in the Continental Army. The strategic acumen of the Patriots was always unclear, and if in 1778 an alliance with France might have appeared to provide the solution, this was the France that had been routed in North America in 1758–60 and, with its ally Spain, had been heavily defeated in the Caribbean in 1762.

It is easy, using the phrase of the “War of American Independence” or the “American Revolution,” to focus on the struggle in North America. Notably, a treatment of two events in 1778—the Battle of Monmouth Court House on June 28 and the British capture of Savannah on December 29—can bind these disparate episodes into a common narrative and analysis of the struggle, and help us to consider the French entry into the war as an adjunct and a contributing factor. This then becomes a context within which subsequent French operations can be considered as well as those involving Spain and the Dutch, once they joined in the war in 1779 and 1780 respectively. From such a perspective, the Spanish and the Dutch can be presented as having joined the war on the Patriot side, whereas, instead, they had done so on behalf of France, as was demonstrated by both the warfare and politics of the struggle.

The standard American view of these alliances is a seriously misleading account, for the purposes of the French, the Spanish, and the Dutch were not focused on helping the Patriots. The importance to the American Revolution of the entry of other powers hinged in large part on the British reaction and, to a considerable degree, this moved maneuvers in the Thirteen Colonies into a secondary sphere. For France, the Caribbean was the prime locus of operation in the Western Hemisphere, as it also was for Spain. Both powers had been defeated there by the British in the Seven Years’ War, and each was eager to reverse this defeat, which did not appear immutable and, indeed, was not so. It was the Napoleonic Wars, instead, that were decisive to this process and, even then, it was unclear what would have happened had Britain been still left to fight alone against France from 1812.

The Caribbean offered wealth in the shape of plantation goods that were readily accessible and, with their economies, governance, and defense dependent on port capitals, the islands were particularly vulnerable to naval action. Furthermore, attack was the best form of defense, as rival bases were in close proximity. Compared to this, the value of operating on the American continent was more limited and the likely cost of doing so, rather than acting in the Caribbean, was greater. Conversely, the Caribbean posed serious hazards in the shape of disease and hurricanes, more so than in the Southern colonies, while the density of fortifications in the Caribbean was far greater than in America, as was their strength.

The Jacobites, whom France had supported from 1689 to 1759 when at war with Britain, had failed to restore the Stuart monarchy. They lacked strategic depth because they did not control any of the British Isles. In contrast, like Scotland when it had been independent and a French ally from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, the American Patriots had an element of strategic depth, even though it was unclear what this would mean in practice. In the event, the strategic depth provided them with durability and entailed, from the French perspective, a sustained diversion of British resources, both army and navy.

As in the 1730s and the early 1750s, France and Spain had put a major effort into developing their navies and, as a result, Britain had lost its relative degree of naval superiority. That helped ensure that, for all great powers involved, the naval dimension would be foremost in any conflict with Britain. This factor was accentuated by the slowness of the British to mobilize their navy and by the degree to which Britain in 1778–83 was faced by a French–Spanish closeness greater than in the later stages of the Seven Years’ War. France and Spain would naturally try to play to what was their advantage. This was an even greater factor because neither power was also at war with another state, whereas both had been so during the Seven Years’ War, with France fighting Prussia (as well as resisting British coastal attacks that were not a factor in 1778–83) and Spain fighting Portugal.

There is therefore a choice to be made by commentators. On the one hand, a historian can concentrate on the war in the Thirteen Colonies, which arguably offers a misleading account of British priorities and general significance. On the other, the historian may try to address the global dimension adequately. In a story that stretches, however, from the Indian Ocean via the Mediterranean and the English Channel to the Caribbean, this latter option risks leaving the Thirteen Colonies as not quite an afterthought but still as a bit player in a wider struggle. Americans, understandably, are generally not inclined to this view, and the major significance for later global history of American independence encourages a focus on the war in the Thirteen Colonies.

Yet that is to anticipate the future, both the result of the conflict in 1783 and this later significance, notably after the challenge of the Civil War of 1861–65 had been overcome and the American economy had grown rapidly. Prior to the rise of America, in practice, it was the ability of Britain to survive France and its allies from 1778 to 1815 that was of greater importance for world history. Rather than determining the agenda, the Patriots/Americans operated in the shadow of these assaults by France and its allies. Indeed, French military performances helped the Patriots win independence (1783) but also created a spur for the purchase of Louisiana (1803). Due to the Anglo-French struggle, the French were unable to protect New Orleans adequately and also needed America’s purchase money for Louisiana. America, in contrast, was in no position to force them to sell it. The new American nation also was somewhat insulated from a less than outstanding war record against Britain in the War of 1812 (1812–15). At the same time, it can be pointed out that France became willing to commit in 1778 in part due to the signs of Patriot resilience. This approach is very comforting to American perspectives of the war, with the news of Saratoga and Germantown apparently helping prompt French moves and the debate over which was most significant. Reasons can be found for both, with Germantown showing doggedness and a taking of the initiative after the loss of Philadelphia.

Yet that view gives the Patriots too much agency, for they were not to the fore in French policymaking. Thus, the influential French foreign minister Charles, Count of Vergennes, sought British cooperation against the partitioning powers in Eastern Europe, notably Russia. There is an analogy to ideas today. Vergennes—who had served at Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, and was, as a result, particularly concerned about Russia—thought that a weakened Britain would be more likely to follow the French lead against Russia. Separately, the French in 1778 were immediately challenged by the outbreak of war between their ally Austria and Prussia. In the event, the French focused on war with Britain, thwarting British hopes that the Patriots would be left exposed and therefore seek reconciliation. Yet the Patriots joined an alliance that was even weaker than that with which Madison was to align in 1812–14, which launched unsuccessful invasions of Canada only to find Napoleon lost in 1812, 1813, and 1814. Had the Bourbon invasion plan of 1779 against southern England and, crucially, the major naval base of Portsmouth succeeded, then the Patriot strategy of an alliance with France would have seemed more appropriate. But it did not. Moreover, like Lincoln in 1864, George III’s proxy Lord North won the election of 1780, so Britain appeared unlikely to collapse from within. Atkinson has a very fine passage on the Gordon Riots in London in 1780, but these were no prototype for those in Paris in 1789. Indeed it was the absence of a revolution in the British center of power that created a grave strategic problem for the Patriot resistance movements in North America. The Patriots had to try to encourage a change of heart in London. They could not dictate one. Precisely because Atkinson focuses on the narrative approach, he cannot stop for a lengthy analysis of capabilities and options, but, absent that, his treatment of strategies is necessarily incomplete.

That judgment might appear harsh, but that is not my intention. Atkinson offers the best narrative of the war that is available. He moves the reader from one war to another. The 1777 campaign, one of drama in the North and the Middle Colonies, was the last in which the Patriots fought alone. That in 1780 saw far less consequential campaigning in the Middle Colonies, let alone the North. Instead, the geography, alignments, and issues of the conflict were centered in the South. Furthermore, the Patriots did not fight alone. Not only was Britain also at war with France and Spain but, in addition and differently significant, those powers had forces fighting Britain in North America.

Atkinson deserves much praise for his account. If it has deficiencies, well, no one can get right a conflict that provides national myth as well as civil war, quest for liberty as well as rebellion for self-interest, epic in the sun and savagery in the shadows.

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Our Reviewer: Jeremy Black, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Exeter, is a Senior Fellow of the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is the author of an impressive number of works in history and international affairs, frequently demonstrating unique interactions and trends among events, including The Great War and the Making of the Modern World, Combined Operations: A Global History of Amphibious and Airborne Warfare, and The War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon. Works he has previously reviewed here include Empireworld: How British Imperialism Shaped the Globe, Why War?, Seapower in the Post-Modern World, Mobility and Coercion in an Age of Wars and Revolutions, Augustus the Strong, Military History for the Modern Strategist, The Great Siege of Malta, Hitler’s Fatal Miscalculation, Superpower Britain, Josephine Baker’s Secret War, Captives and Companions. A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World, War and Power: Who Wins Wars—and Why, The Pacific’s New Navies, No More Napoleons, and Republic and Empire. Crisis, Revolution, America’s Early Independence.

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