The Faults of the Generals: How Great Britain Lost the War for America

Abstract

By 1778, the world's most powerful Empire had failed, for almost four years, to decisively end an internal rebellion in its North American colonies. This failure resulted in the escalation to a world war and the British submitting to defeat in 1783. What is of interest is not the international community's impact on the outcome of the American Revolution, rather how the British military continually missed the opportunity to end the rebellion in its nascent phase. Therefore, this research will explore the strategic interaction between the British military, the patriots and the American colonists to determine what British military commanders' decisions contributed to these missed opportunities, and the ultimate loss of their War for America. To illuminate what went wrong, this research will import the McCormick Diamond paradigm to sift through this field of history, framing the strategic decisions, the conditions under which they were made and their effects on the overall British effort to quell the colonial rebels of North America.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 2011
Accession Number
ADA555930

Entities

People

  • Clifton J. Lopez
  • David W. Gunther
  • Kristoffer R. Barriteau

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Human Systems
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • American Revolution
  • Commerce
  • Employment
  • Geography
  • Governments
  • Insurgency
  • Law
  • Military Organizations
  • New England
  • New Jersey
  • New York
  • North America
  • North Carolina
  • Organizational Structure
  • Personnel Management
  • United States
  • Warfare

Fields of Study

  • History

Readers

  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.
  • Strategic Security Studies