The American Revolutionary War: birth of a superpower

• The global origins of the Boston Tea Party
• 1776: the year of American independence
• 10 things you (probably) didn't know about the American War of Independence

In 1763, Britain emerged victorious from a war against France – fought partly on American soil side-by-side with the colonists – with territorial gains but a tremendous debt. Britain looked to the 13 colonies of North America for money, taking the unprecedented action of imposing taxes, demanding exclusivity of trade and forbidding westward settlement into Native American lands. This ignited resentment amongst the colonists, who saw taxes as an attack on their rights as subjects of the British Crown, arguing that they had no obligation to pay a parliament in which they had no voice. “No taxation without representation,” became their rallying cry.

The heartland of resistance was Boston, capital of Massachusetts: a flourishing city of merchants, manufacturers and entrepreneurs. While their loyalty to the Crown was not in doubt, Bostonians were reliant on trade and so vociferously opposed the Stamp Act, which essentially taxed all documents, and the indirect taxes placed on imported goods like glass, lead, paints, paper and tea by the Townshend Acts.

Boycotts were organised, assemblies held, petitions signed, propaganda distributed and acts of agitation, even violence against officials, carried out. And at the centre was a clandestine group of radicals, the Sons of Liberty. Among them were future Founding Fathers John Adams and John Hancock, but perhaps the most influential firebrand was Samuel Adams, condemned in Britain as the most dangerous man in Massachusetts.

Opposition to taxation began to turn to revolutionary zeal, especially after the Boston Massacre of 5 March 1770, when British troops fired into an angry crowd, resulting in five deaths. Then, in the wake of the Boston Tea Party, Britain passed the so-called Intolerable Acts. These punitive measures included the closure of the city harbour and appointed General Thomas Gage, commander of British forces in North America, as military governor of Massachusetts. Boston was a powder keg, ready to set the colonies ablaze.

❷ The shot heard around the world

A mission to confiscate an illicit cache of small arms went awry in the worst possible way

The anti-British Patriots went on the offensive: taking control of local government in Massachusetts, training militias and stockpiling munitions. Yet around one-third of colonists, known as Loyalists or Tories, continued to support the Crown.

In early 1775, the British Parliament declared Massachusetts in a state of rebellion and ordered Gage, in command of 4,000 men, to disarm the militias. Hoping to avoid a “bloody crisis”, he aimed to take the fight from the rebels by seizing weapons and gunpowder. On hearing of a large store in Concord, 20 miles from Boston, he dispatched a force in the early hours of 19 April.

They lost the element of surprise when someone – possibly Gage’s American wife – let the Patriots know of the raid. Three men, Paul Revere, Samuel Presscott and William Dawes, made midnight rides to warn the militias. A signal had also been planned where lanterns would be lit in the tower of Boston’s Old North Church, one if the British marched by land and two if they crossed the Charles River. There were two that night. By the time the Redcoats reached Lexington at sunrise, tired and sodden, around 77 armed men were waiting on the village green. Their leader, Captain John Parker, called out: “Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they want a war, let it begin here.” After a tense pause, a shot rang out – no one knows who fired – and a brief skirmish ensued, which left eight militiamen dead.

The British continued to Concord only to find few munitions and hundreds of militiamen, with more on the way. The first British soldier was killed, by the immortalised ‘shot heard round the world’, and they began a torturous retreat back to Boston, harassed all the way by hidden snipers. Having lost nearly 300 men, the dwindling and demoralised Redcoat column limped into Boston, which then fell under a siege lasting until March 1776. The war had begun.

❸ The Continental Congress

The colonies ratified their independence from Britain after a slow start

The war against Britain was not only fought by militias and armies, but also by a collection of statesmen, politicians, lawyers, thinkers, activists and writers. The Continental Congress was the colonies’ governing body, responsible for the war effort. It struggled constantly, was slow to make decisions, had no infrastructure and made mistakes – its paper money became so worthless it spawned the phrase “not worth a continental”. But the course of war changed with its greatest success: independence.

The First Continental Congress had convened in September 1774, following the Intolerable Acts. In all, 56 delegates from 12 colonies (British-dependent Georgia was absent) met in Philadelphia to organise resistance, make their grievances known and declare a trade boycott. Yet they affirmed their loyalty to the Crown, too.

By the time the Second Continental Congress came together at the pre-arranged date in May 1775, fighting had broken out. Its members voted to create the Continental Army and appointed as its commander-in-chief a Virginia landowner who had been refused a commission in the British army, George Washington.

Still, it was clear the Congress was not committed to independence. The call only grew louder in the first half of 1776. The sensationally popular pamphleteer Thomas Paine had made a stirring case in a treatise called Common Sense, and the violence meted out by the British turned more colonists against them. The Congress also knew independence would open up opportunities of foreign alliances. So, on 2 July, Congress voted in favour of the resolution for independence and two days later, on 4 July, it approved the Declaration of Independence.

Around that time, a 34,000-strong British invasion force landed south of New York, led by brothers General William Howe and Richard, Admiral Lord Howe. In 1777, they launched an operation to cut off the northern colonies of New England. The plan was for General John Burgoyne to march south from Canada to meet Howe’s force moving north up the Hudson River. But when Howe left New York, he went by sea and sailed south with the aim of capturing Philadelphia, home of the Congress. He had succeeded by 25 September, but the isolated Burgoyne had to contend with debilitating attacks, including the decisive blow by brilliant commander Benedict Arnold.

In October, Burgoyne had no choice but to surrender at Saratoga. This was a massively significant moment as it persuaded France to join the war. Britain had been fighting a civil war – now it was a global conflict.

❹ Revolutionaries VS Redcoats

Britain's early gains were reversed when the other European powers sided with the Patriots

The image of ramshackle bands of gutsy militiamen taking on pristine columns of Redcoats is ingrained in the legacy of the war. Yet whilst the Patriots successfully utilised guerrilla tactics, the two sides generally fought in pitched battles with similar approaches.

The British had clear advantages. Their soldiers were rigorously trained, disciplined and not distracted by thoughts of bringing in the harvest or protecting their lands and families. Their ranks included militias of Loyalists and paid German soldiers, mostly Hessians. Efforts were made to recruit black men – slave and free – and Native Americans too, although many also joined the Patriot cause.

At sea, Britain ruled the waves, which was crucial as it was the sole source of supplies. Yet the British had neither a consistent strategy nor a dominant leader; they struggled in unknown terrain. Once France joined, the British had to split their forces across multiple theatres.

The Patriots were driven by more than duty. They fought on home soil for their very future and the “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” of the Declaration of Independence. Tens of thousands of farmers and tradesmen served either in local militias – small, disorderly and with short enlistments, often three months – or the Continental Army. There, soldiers endured dire conditions as supplies ran out, and went without pay.

Things were especially gruesome when, in late 1777, Washington went into winter quarters at Valley Forge as rations were meagre, clothing insufficient and disease spread. More than 2,000 perished. Yet in that misery, the army stayed together and actually improved due to a training regime under Prussian officer Baron von Steuben.

By 1778, with the war at a stalemate, the British turned their attentions to the southern colonies. An invasion force sailed hoping to be bolstered by Loyalist support in Georgia and the Carolinas, and the Southern Strategy started well with the capture of Savannah. Then, on 12 May 1780, the Americans suffered perhaps their worst defeat – the surrender of Charleston and loss of 5,000 troops as prisoners, nearly all the Continental Army in the south.

The outlook was bleak for Washington. Mutinies had to be put down and his trusted commander, Benedict Arnold, defected. The British, for the moment, had the momentum.

❺ The road to Yorktown

The last major land battle took place on the Virginia coast

The man in charge of the Southern Strategy was General Charles Cornwallis. Despite far fewer Loyalists flocking to the British cause than hoped, he led around 10,000 men, most behind the barricades of Savannah and Charleston, and demolished a force nearly double the size of his own at the Battle of Camden on 16 August 1780.

Washington needed a commander in the south to match Cornwallis, and he found one in Nathanael Greene. While the British strove for one decisive victory, he understood how the war could be won: “We fight, we get beat, rise and fight again. We never have to win a battle to win the war. The side that ultimately gets support of the people will prevail.”

Under Greene’s auspices, the militia inflicted a crushing defeat on 1,000 Loyalists at the Battle of Kings Mountain on 7 October, and the Patriots followed it in early 1781 when a splinter force led by Daniel Morgan swept aside the notorious British Legion and its commander, Banastre ‘Bloody Ban’ Tarleton, at Cowpens. Through attrition, Greene wore down Cornwallis’s men and reclaimed much of the Carolinas. Cornwallis believed the best way to defeat him was to cut his supply lines and ended up in Yorktown, on the Virginia coast.

A French fleet sailed from the West Indies to Chesapeake Bay, where they held off a British attack and secured the seas around Yorktown. Cornwallis was cut off. Washington, who had been contemplating an attack on New York, hastily marched south with French commander-in-chief Rochambeau, whilst the Marquis de Lafayette kept the British pinned down.

By the end of September 1781, the combined force had laid siege to Yorktown. Following weeks of bombardment by French siege guns, paltry supplies and a failed evacuation attempt, Cornwallis was forced to surrender on 19 October, with nearly 8,000 men taken prisoner.

At the official ceremony, the British fifes played the tune The World Turned Upside Down and as Cornwallis claimed to be ill, the task fell on his second in command to offer his sword, which he did to Rochambeau before being pointed in the direction of Washington. The peace treaty would not be signed until 3 September 1783, but the war was all but over. A nation had been born in revolution and civil war, and won – a nation that went from 56 men in Philadelphia to the gobal superpower of today, 250 years later.

This article was first published in the November 2018 edition of BBC History Revealed