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Eighteenth-Century Studies 36.3 (2003) 463-465



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Behind the Lines:
Waging War in Eighteenth-Century America

Patricia Cleary
California State University, Long Beach


Stephen Brumwell. Redcoats: The British Soldier and War in the Americas, 1755-1763(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Pp. 349. $34.95.
Dudley C. Gould. Times of Brother Jonathan. What he ate, drank, wore, believed in & used for medicine during the War of Independence(Middletown, CT: Southfarm Press, 2001). Pp. 333. $30.00.

These two works highlight the importance of warfare in eighteenth-century British North America. A regular and recurring phenomenon, wars brought strangers face to face, influenced policy and memory, grew out of and shaped political and economic competition, and culminated in the successful American movement for Independence. During the wars of the 1750s-1780s, troops, both raw and seasoned, from throughout the British empire confronted the distinctive experience of waging war in North America, where the combination of a wild and hostile environment, a sizeable and militarily skilled indigenous presence, and a colonial culture occasionally at odds with that of the mother country made fighting there different from elsewhere. For colonial Americans, imperial and revolutionary [End Page 463] wars fought at home served to forge ties of communication, shared identity, and nationalism.

Historians of the American Revolution have attributed a significant role to the British military as a source of both revolutionary foment and military failure. Typically, the Seven Years' War appears as backdrop to the Revolution, a conflict in which colonists and British regulars took each other's military measure and concluded that each was wanting. The inadequacies of British officers in particular receive attention. After the war, in the late the 1760s, when the rank and file of British troops, drawn from the most uncouth and foul-mouthed segments of society, were stationed in Boston, their presence engendered hostility and fostered the growth of revolutionary sentiment, for the competition they presented to underemployed Bostonians, the assaults they committed—which Samuel Adams strategically memorialized and elaborated—and for the punishment they received at the hands of their superiors. Colonists were appalled at the summary nature and harshness of military justice. In most accounts, the French and Indian War marks the starting point for forces laying the basis for Revolution. Its conclusion brought the British vast new North American territories previously in French hands and created massive debt that post-war British government officials attempted to offset through ill-fated taxes on the obstreperous Americans.

In short, while scholars have painted the British military in a negative light, they have done little to recover the actual experience of the common soldier. It is this oversight that Stephen Brumwell powerfully redresses. In richly documented discussions of what it meant for a British soldier to fight in America, he recreates the physical and psychological world of soldiers of varied backgrounds, the impact of the unfamiliar environment on military efforts, and the legacies of this war. Engaging and thorough, Brumwell's work constitutes a welcome and important addition to a period often studied only as a revolutionary precursor.

One of the most interesting arguments Brumwell offers is that the British Army was not the savagely abused, servile force that historians have often described, but an army which grew into a disciplined and highly maneuverable entity. Rather than inviting scorn from provincials, the members of this army drew the admiration of American compatriots. Indeed, it was in the process of fighting in America that the British troops learned to fight for their own rights in the face of brutal punishments. They petitioned their superiors when they had grievances over various issues, such as securing their discharges or deductions in their pay.

Brumwell presents a compelling picture of camaraderie and loyalty among the troops. Soldiers of good character might receive last minute reprieves for transgressions or rewards for acts of gallantry. Loyalty to a community of fellow soldiers was as important as discipline in motivating soldiers to behave. As accomplished soldiers, they contributed crucial skills and manpower to the victory in the war. By sketching out the...

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