Detachments of British and Hessian troops fanned out across Delaware and New Jersey. At first this subsidiary campaign went well, but Washington, for psychological as much as military reasons, took the offensive and overcame a Hessian unit at Trenton on Christmas Day. This coup was followed by another at Princeton a fortnight later.
The battles of Trenton and Princeton were small-scale affairs which had a disproportionate effect on American opinion. In July 1776, the radicals inside Congress had pushed for and obtained a Declaration of Independence which severed all links with Britain, and ruled out any future compromise based on British sovereignty over America. It is impossible to assess precisely how many Americans supported this move; John Adams, one of the signatories to the declaration, calculated that about a third of the colonists were wholeheartedly behind independence and that the rest were either Loyalists or neutral. To judge by the numbers who took advantage of Howe’s amnesty, the balance was in danger of swinging against supporters of independence. Trenton and Princeton reversed this trend by demonstrating that the British army was not invincible and that there was plenty of fight left in the Americans.
A blow had been struck against Loyalism, which soon began to wither in Delaware and New Jersey. The Loyalist predicament then and throughout the war was summed up by William Smith, the Chief Justice of New York. ‘How unfavourable the Prospects of the Americans who have joined the British Army! They can be safe by Nothing but Conquest of their own Country – If America prevails by the Sword or obtains Concessions to her Contentment, the Tories are ruined. In either Case they must finally abandon the Continent – In the Interim they must borrow Subsistence, which will be to many of them immediate Ruin.’18 The British were losing the war for hearts and minds.
The year 1777 marked the turning point of the war. After over a year’s fighting, the British army had made little headway; there had been no signal victory over the Americans, inroads into territory held by Congress had been limited and Loyalist support had proved disappointing. Howe was pessimistic, and early in July he told Clinton that he expected the war to drag on for at least another year. Clinton, who had just returned from leave in Britain, observed that the government wanted victory by winter. Howe replied, ‘If the ministers would not carry it on another year, they had better give it up now.’19
Germain’s strategy for 1777 was an invasion of Pennsylvania by units of Howe’s army. Simultaneously, a mixed force of 8,000 British, Hessians, Canadians and Indians, commanded by Burgoyne, would advance southwards along the Hudson towards Albany, where he would be joined by reinforcements sent by Howe from New York. If everything went to plan, a wedge would have been driven between the militant New England colonies and the rest of America. This was what Germain intended, and it was made clear in a despatch written on 18 May which Howe received on 16 August, when he was bogged down in Pennsylvania and in no position to assist Burgoyne.
The blame for this blunder lay with Howe. In March, he had read the general outline of Germain’s strategy, but believed that he could safely disregard his obligation to Burgoyne. He felt that the advance on Albany was a peripheral affair and that the attack on Pennsylvania, which had been his brainchild, needed most of his resources and all his energies. These had been noticeably flagging during the spring, and preparations for the Pennsylvania campaign were only completed at the very end of July. By then, a majority of Howe’s senior officers were pressing him to help Burgoyne, but they were overridden and the invasion of Pennsylvania went ahead.20 A totally inadequate force was left behind in New York under Clinton, who was ordered to do what he could to support Burgoyne.
What followed was a débâcle. Burgoyne’s lines of communication were cut and his path was blocked by superior forces. Rather than squander the lives of his men in a battle he had no chance of winning, Burgoyne surrendered his army to General Horatio Gates at Saratoga on 16 October. There were no compensations in Pennsylvania where Howe had nothing but bad luck. At Brandywine he gave Washington’s army a severe shaking, but the Americans made their escape in the nick of time. Philadelphia was taken, but it could not be held since the British had failed to secure control of the Delaware River.
The events of the autumn of 1777 confirmed the Declaration of Independence and the survival of the American republic. Germain’s grand strategy was in ruins and hopes of restoring British sovereignty over all the colonies had been shattered. France, hitherto a benevolent neutral, threw in its lot with the colonists in February 1778 and the American struggle became part of the global war.
* * *
Germain’s new strategy reflected the changed political situation and Britain’s weakness. Outright victory was beyond the grasp of the British army so all efforts were directed towards a salvage operation designed to conquer and retain Georgia and the Carolinas, where Loyalism was reportedly still strong. The campaign of conquest and conciliation was directed by Clinton, who had replaced Howe as commander-in-chief, and it opened promisingly. Savannah was captured in December 1778 and Charleston in May 1780. The mood of the army was now buoyant, and some sensed that a swift and triumphant end to the war was imminent. On hearing the news of Charleston’s fall, General Robertson wrote to Germain that, ‘Britain will recover her former grandeur and the Question you will leave posterity to discuss will be, whether bravery or humanity had the greatest share in reducing America to obedience.’21
As the campaign in the Carolinas progressed, the old problem of Loyalism re-emerged. There were, as predicted, plenty of Loyalists, but they would only cooperate if their safety was guaranteed by the British army. Some of those who did, found themselves embroiled in a subsidiary war of terror and counter-terror that was waged with enormous ferocity in remoter parts of South Carolina. There was also, in 1779, an attempt by the British to enlist the help of the slaves. An appeal to them had been made in November 1775 by Lord Dunmore, the fire-eating and energetic governor of Virginia, who eventually mustered 300 runaways in his ‘Ethiopian Regiment’, whose uniforms carried the slogan, ‘Liberty to Slaves’.22 The local plantocracy had been horrified and Dunmore’s daring move was ultimately self-defeating since it drove scared whites into the arms of Congress.
Between 1779 and 1781 thousands of negroes made their way to the British army, drawn by Clinton’s offer of freedom to any slave of a rebel. Most found themselves employed as labourers, digging earthworks or looking after the army’s massive transport train. By the end of the war, large numbers had been carried to New York from where some were sold back into servitude.23
Neither the white Loyalists nor black slaves who flocked to the British army as it proceeded through the Carolinas made any impact on the campaign. General Sir Charles Cornwallis, who had charge of the operations, won two victories, at Camden in August 1780 and Guilford Court House the following March, but lacked the men to maintain a permanent occupation of the territory which fell into his hands.
The end of the war in the South came, unexpectedly, in October 1781 at Yorktown. The events which led up to this battle were in many respects a rerun of those of 1777. The British high command was again beset by misfortune and muddle, which were made worse by ill-feeling between Clinton and Cornwallis, who later accused his commander-in-chief of starving him of men. This was debatable, but what was certain early in 1781 was that neither general had any clear idea of how best to deploy their forces.
Cornwallis favoured an attack on Virginia, launched a half-hearted invasion and then settled down at Williamsburg to await Clinton’s instructions. Clinton, who had built up a formidable intelligence network, feared an attack on New York, but hoped that he might forestall it by diversionary operations undertaken in Pennsylvania or Rhode Island in conjunction with Cornwallis. Much to his annoyance, Cornwallis was therefore ordered to hold himself in readiness for a seaborne evacuation, and to this end he placed his army within a fortified encampment at Yorktown on the estuary of the York River in southern Virginia. In the meantime, the Franco-American attack on New York had m
aterialised.
At this point the key to the campaign was seapower. So long as supplies and reinforcements could pass by sea between Yorktown and New York, Cornwallis and Clinton were relatively secure. This was not the case after late August when Admiral de Grasse’s fleet arrived from the West Indies and took up positions in the Chesapeake Bay. After a brief, inconclusive action the British North American squadron retired to New York, and with it went Cornwallis’s chances of reinforcement or escape. As the balance of naval power swung against Britain, Washington, forewarned of de Grasse’s intentions, broke camp and began a 450-mile dash from New York to Yorktown. The upshot was that Cornwallis, outnumbered, isolated and under bombardment, surrendered his army on 17 October. As his men marched out and laid down their arms, the band played a popular song, ‘The World Turned Upside Down’.
The disaster at Yorktown was a profound shock for the British. An army had been lost and hopes of holding on to the southern colonies had evaporated. For a time both sides had been showing signs of war-weariness: there had been serious mutinies by American troops, dissatisfied with their pay and conditions, in 1780–1, and there were signs that the discipline of some British regiments was cracking. In February 1781 Captain Peebles, then stationed in New York, noticed that he and his brother officers were drinking more heavily than usual. Morals too relaxed during the twilight of British rule in New York. At a grand ball given by the military governor in March 1781 there were country dances until one in the morning, when supper was eaten. The ladies left at three, after which ‘the Gentlemen closed their files and drank and sang till past 8 o’clock when the remaining few retired to another room and got breakfast after which some went to bed, some to visit their partners, and some to the bawdy house.’24
For six months George III had pig-headedly refused to acknowledge the verdict of Yorktown, and a few other diehards, including Cornwallis, wished to fight on. North was not one of them, and in March 1782 the King finally accepted his resignation. The new prime minister, Rockingham, was a moderate who opened negotiations with the Americans. The successful defence of Gibraltar and the restoration of British seapower in the Caribbean strengthened the hand of British diplomats and the Americans proved willing to forgo claims to Canada on the grounds that a British presence in North America was an insurance against possible French and Spanish expansion in the region. Nevertheless, Britain was obliged to cede those lands to the west of the Mississippi which had been incorporated in Canada under the terms of the Quebec Act.
Pre-war predictions that the British empire would not survive the loss of the American colonies proved false. Naturally there were alarms about the commercial consequences of a break between Britain and America, and in January 1781 a frantic attempt was made to retain the American market with the American Intercourse Bill. But this measure, designed to give American traders exemptions from the navigation laws, was unnecessary for, as the bill’s critics pointed out, the new republic could not survive economically without Britain.
This was true; the volume of Anglo-American trade actually increased after 1783, in particular exports of raw cotton, which rose from an annual average of 15.5 million pounds in the late 1780s to 28.6 million by 1800. Only the American, slave-worked and partly-mechanised cotton plantations could provide the output needed to satisfy the demands of the new, machine-operated Lancashire mills. By 1840, 80 per cent of Lancashire’s supplies of raw cotton came from America. The harvest failures of 1799–1800 led British grain importers to buy up American surpluses which, between 1810 and 1812, helped feed the British army in Spain and Portugal.
The continuance and growth of Anglo-American commerce after 1783 gave the lie to the old mercantilist justification of colonies as exclusive markets, protected and controlled in the economic interests of the mother country. The intellectual props which supported this contention had been knocked away in 1776 with the publication of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, which went through five editions before the author’s death in 1790. Smith’s purpose in this and his other economic tracts had been to measure human progress and employ his calculations to formulate natural laws which governed economic activity. the result was his concept of the Free Market, a product of natural human competition, which, if unfettered by official rules and unhindered by monopolies, provided the most efficient distribution of resources and the greatest benefits to the consumer.
According to Smith, colonies were redundant. The apparatus of state control over their trade was an encumbrance to commerce which interfered with natural market forces and raised prices. Indirect proof of the futility of regulations has been provided by the market’s response to the official trade embargoes imposed during the American War, when the annual value of smuggled goods was calculated as at least £2 million. A sophisticated trading nation like Britain could flourish in an expanding international free market. This was proved beyond question by the growth of non-colonial trade during the 1790s, in particular with America and Europe.
Smith’s theories and the post-war pattern of British trade undermined the economic arguments which had hitherto justified the empire. Moreover, the events of the American War strongly suggested that Britain, having enlarged its territories by the victories of 1759–62, had overstretched its naval and military resources to a point where contraction was inevitable, even desirable. French operational difficulties and not the strength of the home fleet had prevented the invasion attempt of 1779. The strain had been too great and it only needed a temporary loss of seapower in North American waters during the autumn of 1781 to demonstrate that the defense of a global empire required Britain to be equally strong everywhere. Cornwallis capitulation at Yorktown may have been a psychological shock, but it was not a surprise.
No distinctly imperialist political ideology had emerged after the spectacular conquests of the Seven Years War. Then and later, the ownership of a vast overseas empire was generally seen as a source of wealth and a monument to national virtues, in particular those displayed on the battlefield. In 1778, a despairing American Loyalist wrote from England; ‘I fear this nation has sunk into too selfish, degenerate, luxurious a sloth, to rise into such manly, noble exertions as her critical situation seems to demand.’ The question as to whether moral decadence contributed appreciably to slipshod planning and poor generalship was left unasked.
The crisis in 1774–76 had, however, prompted some examination of the political nature of the empire and a discussion about its future. Some British Whigs and Radicals accepted that there were no moral or political reasons to prevent the Americans from choosing to go their own way, even if this meant independence. In practical terms, it was ridiculous to spend large sums of money in holding down the colonies and, at the same time, allege that they were a vital source of national wealth. The abandonment of rigid control by London and its replacement by some form of American self-government would not automatically dissolve the economic connection between Britain and North America. If there were any imperial bonds between Britain and the colonists they were, as many Americans pointed out, those of shared beliefs in personal liberty and representative institutions.
Thinking along these lines influenced post-war official policy towards the Canadian provinces. After 1783 their population had been swelled by thousands of Loyalist refugees and former soldiers in the Loyalist corps who had been rewarded with land grants. There were also schemes to give financial help to the new settlers who ended the demographic imbalance between French and British colonists. The political future of Canada was given consideration with plans for representative assemblies which would enjoy powers and rights similar to those of the British parliament. In taking such a line, the British government showed that it had learned something from the recent upheavals in America, but it was hoped that an ‘aristocracy’ of wealth and talent would emerge in Canada which would naturally attach itself to the British crown rather than lead a movement for complete self-government.
Elsewhere it was impossible to proceed with policies o
f the kind proposed for Canada which, conceivably, would lead to its eventual independence. The Caribbean colonies, vulnerable to France and with vast populations of slaves, needed British protection, as did the West African outposts who were the source of labour for the West Indies. As for India, successive governments faced the problem of how to assert their authority over a process of territorial expansion which appeared to have run out of control.
6
The Terror of Our Arms: Conquest and Trade in India, 1689–1815
One of the panels carved between 1728 and 1730 by the fashionable sculptor Michael Rysbrack for a chimney piece in East India House showed Britannia receiving the riches of the East in the form of a half-clothed native woman proffering a small treasure chest. The same theme was rendered almost identically on a ceiling painting executed fifty years later by an Italian, Spiridione Roma. Britannia, a lion at her feet, examines a string of pearls she has taken from a cushion held up by an Indian woman. Another woman grasps a large, Chinese-style urn, presumably filled with tea, while, commanded by Mercury the god of commerce, a third figure approaches with a bundle, perhaps filled with calico or muslin. In the foreground of both carving and painting is a representation of Father Thames, a reminder that London was the principle beneficiary of this outpouring of oriental wealth.
While the decorations of East India House symbolised pure commerce, there was a distinctly imperial look to the triumphal arch erected in front of the new Government House at Calcutta in the early 1800s. Roman in scale and grandeur, the great central arch was crowned by a stone lion, its pose both commanding and vigilant. Behind this imposing gateway lay Government House, a palace in the Georgian Palladian manner faced with tall marble columns. These public buildings were erected at the orders of Richard Wellesley, Earl of Mornington and later Marquess Wellesley, who served as governor-general of India between 1798 and 1805. They reflected his own aristocratic addiction to the pomp and trappings of power, and the new self-confident, imperious spirit which was abroad among his countrymen in India. They were no longer men of business; they were the masters of an empire who required the architectural style of Rome and the permanence of marble to give substance to their authority.
The Rise and Fall of the British Empire Page 15