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Roots of Conflict: British Armed Forces and Colonial Americans, 1677-1763

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*Roots of Conflict* examines the relationship between British armed forces and colonial Americans from 1677 through 1763. This cut off date, 1763, is deliberate. The events after 1763 that culminated in revolution are not the whole story. The author contends that the roots of Anglo-American conflict stretched back a full century and set the stage for the eventual decision to declare independence. He finds these roots in various negative experiences that shaped Britains' and Americans' perceptions of one another. The very presence of troops in the colonies, for example, caused resentment among Americans, who perceived the British army as a symbol of imperial power and a tool to crush colonial insurgency. The British, on their part, resented their role as defenders of backwoods settlements of ungrateful, militarily inept, undisciplined yahoos. Various joint military expeditions, furthermore, ended disastrously, Americans chafed under harsh military treatment, and the impressment of Americans into military service, volunteers being scarce, was common. These experiences and others fostered mutual ill-will between British and Americans and hardened perceptions of each group's being different from the other. A good book for readers interested in the American colonial experience or the causes of the American Revolution.

This is an eye-opening study of the relations between colonial Americans and British regular troops and Royal Navy seamen in the century preceding the flashpoint of the American Revolution. Relying heavily on diary entries, court records, newspaper accounts, and other primary source material, Leach describes a tumultuous relationship between provincials and redcoats that started badly and continued to grow worse throughout the eighteenth century. Even in war time, the relationship often broke down. Colonists viewed a standing army as a potentially repressive threat to liberty, even when such troops were sent ostensibly to protect them. Redcoats usually made unfavorable first impressions among the populace, demanding privileges the colonists were unwilling to grant, while the impressment of provincial residents caused great consternation up and down the American seaboard. Colonial resistance was met with hostile words, outright threats, and arrogant behavior by many British regulars. Forced to pay inflated prices for supplies or to confiscate what they needed, the British saw the colonists as greedy, lazy, and unpatriotic. For their part, colonists saw the British soldiers as arrogant, demanding, and unconcerned with colonial interests and prosperity altogether. When the two sides did join forces in battle, such as at the siege of Louisburg, the entire campaign revolved around recriminatory charges on both sides. The redcoats in particular looked down on their American allies as sloppy, unprofessional, and noncooperative, while the colonists seethed over the fact that British rank superceded their own. All of this was complicated by the fact that controversies between royal governors and general assemblies, as well as intercolonial rivalries, also led to problems which the British troops failed to understand. The king and Parliament in Britain did little to help matters, and their failure to specify jurisdiction and chains of command in the American setting led to further confusion and controversy.

By 1763, it is easy to see a deeply ingrained resentment between redcoats and colonists. While this certainly contributed to the eventual declaration of independence and the British response, this would still seem to be a secondary influence compared to matters of natural rights, taxation fairness, and larger political/economic factors. The disdain expressed by professional British soldiers and sailors for their disorganized, unpolished, amateur American counterparts may well have led them to underestimate the fighting prowess of the Americans; militiamen, for their part, had to be encouraged by the fact that their wilderness fighting skills gave them a distinct advantage over the redcoats' European formation style of fighting. More importantly, a shared and pervasive resentment of British regulars was an important unifying factor among all of the colonies by the eve of the revolution. Given the history of joint cooperation and continual conflict between the British and Americans, it is a wonder that British colonial control lasted as long as it did and that English control of the colonies was never lost to the French. While Leach may overestimate the importance of this matter of military relations in explaining the origins of the Revolutionary War, the relatively unknown history revealed in these pages is both fascinating and disturbing.

This extremely informative little book provides the reader with ample information on why the British Militery establishment and colonial America did not see eye to eye and perhaps a few clues to the causes of the American revolution as well as to why some of the British mistakes at Lexinton and Concord as well as Bunker Hill were perpetrated.

A good read and will facinate anyone whether they be interested in Militery or social history or just interested in the period.