Interesting facts on the revolutionary war

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Teaos
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Interesting facts on the revolutionary war

Post by Teaos »

Now to be fair Cracked isnt the best source of information in the world, but they do fact checking and referencing, either way its an interesting read. Especially the bit about the size of the British army and French armies.

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When war broke out, the Colonies boasted a population of 2.5 million. Even with just a third of them actively supporting the revolution, and just, say, a quarter of them able-bodied men, the British still had a hell of a crowd to contend with ... especially when you consider the fact that just 40,000 British soldiers were expected to subdue them. That's 40,000 soldiers facing 2.5 million people, spread out over thousands of miles, each of them a potential enemy until proven otherwise.
Colonists never, ever faced the fearsome British army of the late empire. For the most part, the field armies tasked with suppressing the rebellion were softened units that hadn't seen combat in a decade. As for asking for backup, no matter how belated: There was none to send. In 1776, the total manpower of British military might reached 96,000. That was their entire worldwide strength. With these men, the British were fighting the Patriots, while holding Caribbean possessions, while manning their stations at Gibraltar and Minorca, and Ireland, and Gold Coast territories ... and defending England itself.


Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_20306_5- ... z2NvWRqWfR
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Re: Interesting facts on the revolutionary war

Post by Deepcrush »

What ended up hurting England during the war was that it had such a reliance on colonial troops. As such, when the colonies revolted many of the troops of the time in the region either turned against England or just sat out the conflict.
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Re: Interesting facts on the revolutionary war

Post by Teaos »

Thats the differences between an occupying army and a fighting army.
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Re: Interesting facts on the revolutionary war

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Deepcrush wrote:What ended up hurting England during the war was that it had such a reliance on colonial troops. As such, when the colonies revolted many of the troops of the time in the region either turned against England or just sat out the conflict.
More the fact that we were fighting every other major power on the planet at the same time.
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Re: Interesting facts on the revolutionary war

Post by RK_Striker_JK_5 »

I did rather like number three. I will admit in my youth I also thought of the Americans using guerrilla tactics, but yeah. Reloading time or even trying to do it on the run... not good.
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Re: Interesting facts on the revolutionary war

Post by Teaos »

Yeah its hard to auume anything about a war hundreds of years old.
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Re: Interesting facts on the revolutionary war

Post by Mikey »

Most of these are neither interesting nor novel. Especially the bit about how outnumbered the Brits were - any inequality ideated on the colonists' side was never attributed to numerical disadvantage, but to the limeys' distinct advantages in kit, training, and experience. If relative numbers weren't an issue for the Brits, they probably wouldn't have had to put out want ads for German mercs.
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Re: Interesting facts on the revolutionary war

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Remember the rest of the world is not forced to learn American history in school, for anyone with only passing familiarity to the war, a lot of those facts are rather interesting.
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Re: Interesting facts on the revolutionary war

Post by RK_Striker_JK_5 »

And I'm an American and I found them interesting.
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Re: Interesting facts on the revolutionary war

Post by Mikey »

Teaos wrote:Remember the rest of the world is not forced to learn American history in school, for anyone with only passing familiarity to the war, a lot of those facts are rather interesting.
I guess I didn't see it from that perspective, but I thought at least things like the lack of numerical advantage would have been known to folks from former members of the BE.
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Re: Interesting facts on the revolutionary war

Post by Teaos »

I always knew the Americans would naturally have an advantage in numbers, but I assumed the British forces were more than 40,000. I would have thought anywhere from 100-200k at least.

The Brits sent 12k soilders to take NZ from the natives who numbered about 80k... so extrapolatiing... the British force in America could have been in the hundreds of thousands.
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Re: Interesting facts on the revolutionary war

Post by Deepcrush »

The numbers you're seeing are English in the Colonies, again its important to remember that through out history the bulk of the UK's fighting ability has been through others fighting for them.
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Re: Interesting facts on the revolutionary war

Post by Aaron »

I live above you guys and we don't get much US history, though more then a typical US public school student it seems. But yeah, they did the "small professional force backed by native auxillaries" for a good while. Oddly enough i've heard for quite a while now that the American colonies weren't profitable, or at least not as profitable as the Caribean which produced sugar and what would be Canada, that gave them stupid hats and ship masts.
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Re: Interesting facts on the revolutionary war

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For the first century the East coast provided a lot of high quality old growth timber. But after that was gone the big money items were found elsewhere. America was sustainable but not profitable.
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Re: Interesting facts on the revolutionary war

Post by Mikey »

Canada would have petered out, too, once the felt trade fell in the mid-19th century, but by that time it was too entrenched as a member of the Commonwealth. Most of the wealth in what would become the U.S. lay far to the west of the colonies, well out of the conception of the British (or the colonists at the time.)
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