Redcoats: The British Soldier and War in the Americas, 1755-1763 (review)

Generations of schoolchildren in the United States have been taught that in 1776 British colonists raised a 'ragtag' army who, using their superior knowledge of the terrain and lessons learned from their Indian wars, defeated the mighty British Army. To compound the confusion, the British Army is universally described as the best army on earth in these narratives, even while they appear to never get the knack of fighting colonists on their own ground. The American schoolbook British soldier relentlessly marches through battle after battle presenting himself as a stationary target conveniently marked by his brilliant scarlet uniform. Stephen Brumwell alludes to this popular view of the 'redcoat' of the British Army as the origin for his own childhood interest in the subject. Fortunately for us, Brumwell grew up and wrote this meticulously researched and beautifully written study of exactly who wore those 'redcoats' and how they became a formidable force. It was during the Seven Years War, Brumwell asserts, that Britain's 'American Army' was 'transformed into a sprawling instrument of empire.' This transformation occurred directly as a result of exactly what the myth claims the British Army could not do: adapt.

For every regular action such as the victory over the French on the Plains of Abraham there were, as Brumwell details, months of 'irregular actions' on a smaller scale. During the campaigns of the 1750s and 1760s, the American Army was forced to adjust to a wide variety of climates and environments that stretched from Canada to the Caribbean. Native enemies posed tactical problems that challenged what these Europeans understood as 'laws of war' calling for the adoption of local techniques in battle and for physical survival. Brumwell makes a compelling case for the evolution of a fighting force by the mid-1760s that was smart, tough, and resourceful.

Brumwell offers a corrective for the unfortunate 'two-dimensional figure' of the enlisted man and thus of Britain's 'American Army.' By looking further afield to regimental returns, hospital and pension and records, and even a few surviving accounts of private soldiers themselves, Brumwell unsurprisingly uncovers a more complex picture. Men who filled the enlisted ranks varied by occupation, age, health, intellect, experience, and even race. The officer corps had its own variations in background and motives as well as the limited, but real, opportunity to rise in rank as well as social standing by coming to the notice of a superior who could play patron. It is interesting that, while Brumwell concedes that 'savage discipline' was a given in the eighteenth-century military world, he does not consider it sufficient reason in itself to explain the steadily growing reputation the Army had for skill and discipline.

The issue of the combination of shared experience and the composition of the American Army is more suggestive, Brumwell concludes, of a nascent British nationalism incubated in a 'professional fraternity.' The Scots and the Irish comprised more than half of the American Army by 1760, and while his claim might be a bit overblown, certainly there are intriguing elements that show at least the outlines of how national identity would be forged in the imperial military culture of the next century. Most obvious is the case of the Royal Highland Regiment whose use of tartans and weapons banned since 1745 was incorporated as specific regimental symbols. Ultimately Redcoats is an important book. It can assume a place as a companion to Fred Anderson's classic study of the war itself (Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766) to restore full credit to the skills and fortitude of the 'redcoats' who were Britain's American Army for that victory and as a starting place for understanding the military dimensions of Britain's great empire of the next two centuries.