ABSTRACT
The American War of Independence tends to overshadow other events between the Seven Years’ War and the French revolutionary wars in the standard Western approach. It was not the sole conflict in the period, but is important in the global context, and not only because it led to the birth of the USA, the modern military (and academic history) superpower. The war was the first major revolutionary conflict, the first large-scale transoceanic conflict between a European colonial power and subjects of European descent, and, from 1778, an important episode in the long-standing struggle between Britain and France. In North America, the war was both revolutionary, in that it was one of the first important ‘modern’ instances of the ‘nation-in-arms’, and traditional, in that it was essentially fought on terms that would have been familiar to those who had been engaged in recent conflicts in Europe and North America. The American response to battle, adopting the lines of musketeers of European warfare, was scarcely surprising, as numerous Americans had served in the mid-century British wars against the Bourbons, over 10,000 of them as regulars, while many others were familiar with the methods of European armies, especially the British, through reading, observation or discussion.
