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How France Changed the Tides of the American Revolution (2018)

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Re: How France Changed the Tides of the American Revolution (2018)

#71

Post by sofixa »

pyuser583 wrote: post #55
InTheArena wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who studied American history, this point of view always irks me a little bit. The reality of it is that all of the assumptions that America would have lost without French support is trying to prove a counterfactual. There are a lot of reasons to think that it would not have been so. Every southern campaign that the British had tried to pull off was a disaster. The cost to the British crown of maintaining a…

I’ve heard that due to the militia system, an insanely large number of Americans participated in the revolution. Much higher than the conscript armies of the 20th century - possibly as high as 13%. That’s greater mobilization than in WWII.

> Much higher than the conscript armies of the 20th century - possibly as high as 13%

Considering it was as high as 80% of military aged men for Germany and France, with a few other countries in the 50-70% range, why do you think 13%, even if you mean from the whole population, is higher?

Re: How France Changed the Tides of the American Revolution (2018)

#72

Post by Nomentatus »

odd_perfect_num wrote: post #57
Nomentatus wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a maxim that guerrilla wars succeed with a lot of external help and supply, if they succeed at all, throughout history. That's fact. The French were financial supporters from before the shooting began; and supplied high tech gunpowder that meant that from the start the colonists' muskets had significantly more range, no small thing. Without France, nothing. The French ended up bankrupting the state due to extrem…

The American Revolution was not a Guerilla war. It was primarily fought with pitched battles between opposing armies. This was the case from the first shots (at Lexington, and subsequently Concord and Bunker Hill) to the last at Yorktown.

It did not begin as a guerrilla war, true; but the abject failure of that initial effort made it clear to Washington that the war had to continue as an irregular war without set front lines or attempts to directly take back New York or Boston. Guerrilla wars can have large battles, but do not have established, continuing and continuous front lines. Mao's troops now and then held large battles with the Japanese (and KMT), once by choice - but his armies nearly always fought as guerillas and were far more successful in that role.

Perhaps the American revolution isn't as obvious a case because the Brits tended to turtle a lot; not trying to demonstrate that they were in control of nearly the whole place and so providing a plethora of targets (unlike the Japanese, say.)

Re: How France Changed the Tides of the American Revolution (2018)

#73

Post by sofixa »

odd_perfect_num wrote: post #62

Does anyone remember where the longest siege ever in history was waged? Hint: It was in the American Revolution. Second hint: Not Yorktown or Boston. Answer: Correct! The siege of Gibraltar. Undertaken by France and Spain, the (largely inept) siege lasted more than 3.5 years and delayed the end of the war long past Yorktown.

Even the Siege of Sarajevo (if you want to talk about a pure land siege excluding naval blockades) is 3 years and 10 months.

Re: How France Changed the Tides of the American Revolution (2018)

#74

Post by Mikeb85 »

ericmay wrote: post #26
Waterluvian wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I may, I feel a bit irked that we often see these outcomes as binary. Wouldn’t the absence of French involvement be likely to have caused a considerable change in social, political, and economic landscape, regardless of who ultimately “won”? I’ve been thinking about how different paces to the Ukraine war’s culmination (eg. we increase support by 10x tomorrow) could have significant impacts on future attitudes and…

I’m not sure lack of French support would have made a difference with how we understand America today assuming the Americans had still won, but had the British won, frankly, I think the US would have been better off in many respects.

Not a chance. You can simply look at Canada and Australia to see how it might have played out... It's a difference in culture and attitude but we (Can & Aus) don't innovate, don't create, don't have the "American Dream" and in Canada we're getting dragged along by the US but still far worse on almost every economic metric.

Re: How France Changed the Tides of the American Revolution (2018)

#75

Post by atdrummond »

sofixa wrote: post #71
pyuser583 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve heard that due to the militia system, an insanely large number of Americans participated in the revolution. Much higher than the conscript armies of the 20th century - possibly as high as 13%. That’s greater mobilization than in WWII.

> Much higher than the conscript armies of the 20th century - possibly as high as 13% Considering it was as high as 80% of military aged men for Germany and France, with a few other countries in the 50-70% range, why do you think 13%, even if you mean from the whole population, is higher?

I think they mean conscript armies of the US.

Re: How France Changed the Tides of the American Revolution (2018)

#76

Post by philwelch »

jacquesm wrote: post #44
pvg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All sorts of sentiments are around in all sorts of threads. What you can't do is write sweeping generalizations about entire massive categories of people. It's a totally basic rule of any vaguely sane forum beside being simply common decency.

Ok, so we'll do away with the sweeping generalizations and I'll try to rephrase it in a way that it is factually correct without stepping over those boundaries, let me know if it gets a pass or not: In France and amongst French people the prevailing sentiment is that an everlasting debt is owed to the United States and other allied forces that helped liberate France from the Germans at the conclusion of World War II.…

France attempted to pull the United States into another war against Britain less than a decade after the end of the Revolutionary War and, when the Americans weren't interested, sent privateers to interfere in Anglo-American trade, leading to a naval conflict known as the "Quasi-War" in the late 1790's.

The pop-culture reputation of the French as surrendering cowards is, I would agree, a poor representation of what happened in the Second World War. What happened in the Second World War was that the Third Republic was absolutely filled with fascist sympathizers, Anglophobes, and other willing collaborators. The problem wasn't an unwillingness to fight so much as an unwillingness to fight Germany in particular in an alliance with Britain. Unfortunately, this doesn't exactly make France look like a very good ally, either. Nor does the time France unilaterally withdrew their troops from NATO in the 1960's because they, once again, wanted the option of making a separate peace.

Re: How France Changed the Tides of the American Revolution (2018)

#77

Post by philwelch »

Nomentatus wrote: post #72
odd_perfect_num wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American Revolution was not a Guerilla war. It was primarily fought with pitched battles between opposing armies. This was the case from the first shots (at Lexington, and subsequently Concord and Bunker Hill) to the last at Yorktown.

It did not begin as a guerrilla war, true; but the abject failure of that initial effort made it clear to Washington that the war had to continue as an irregular war without set front lines or attempts to directly take back New York or Boston. Guerrilla wars can have large battles, but do not have established, continuing and continuous front lines. Mao's troops now and then held large battles with the Japanese (and K…

I think the notion of "established, continuing, and continuous front line" is anachronistic to the Revolutionary War in any case. As late as the American Civil War, an army could freely roam through the enemy countryside with relative impunity until a defending army caught up with them, as happened at Antietam and Gettysburg; there was no "front line" to punch through.

Re: How France Changed the Tides of the American Revolution (2018)

#78

Post by hardlianotion »

dragonwriter wrote: post #17
hardlianotion wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No conscription in British army of the Boer War era. I believe conscription for the British army was an innovation that came into being during the First World War.

Modern conscription was an innovation of the First World War, though the militia (restricted to domestic employment, AFAIK) had conscription to fill units in the 18th to early 19th Century.

And in any case, I misread parent comment.

Re: How France Changed the Tides of the American Revolution (2018)

#79

Post by gomoboo »

whearyou wrote: post #67
random314 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the ongoing siege of Gaza counts? Counting 15 years. Or does it not count without any active fight back OR because Gaza is a part of Israel and thus Israel has laid a siege on itself?

Not a siege in any sense. What sieges not only allow the besieged to conduct import/export but actively pay for the besieged’s supplies? Leave the ideology somewhere else

Which ideology are you referring to here? I don’t see one in their comment.

Re: How France Changed the Tides of the American Revolution (2018)

#80

Post by zhdc1 »

Nomentatus wrote: post #46
InTheArena wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who studied American history, this point of view always irks me a little bit. The reality of it is that all of the assumptions that America would have lost without French support is trying to prove a counterfactual. There are a lot of reasons to think that it would not have been so. Every southern campaign that the British had tried to pull off was a disaster. The cost to the British crown of maintaining a…

It's a maxim that guerrilla wars succeed with a lot of external help and supply, if they succeed at all, throughout history. That's fact. The French were financial supporters from before the shooting began; and supplied high tech gunpowder that meant that from the start the colonists' muskets had significantly more range, no small thing. Without France, nothing. The French ended up bankrupting the state due to extrem…

> It's a maxim that guerrilla wars succeed with a lot of external help and supply, if they succeed at all,

Not true. Show me where in "On Guerrilla Warfare" Zedong - an expert on the American and French Revolutions - claims that guerrilla warfare requires external support.

Guerrilla warfare requires the support of the population (pretty much all US IW joint doctrine highlights this).

Economic power facilitates guerrilla warfare, along with the transition to traditional warfare, but it isn't a requirement.

> Washington had to keep British costs high while not losing, he couldn't just sit.

The only thing Washington had to do was survive.

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