A Few Bloody Noses – The American War of Independence by Robert Harvey

This is a very readable history written by a politician turned journalist, now a full-time historian.  Robert Harvey who lives in North Wales, was a Conservative MP in the 1980's and has authored historical works on the Latin American Revolution of the early nineteenth century, and the Portugese revolution of the mid-twentieth.

His family antecedents give him some sympathy with the losing British side in the American War of Independence. 

He is devastating in his criticism of the treatment of Native Americans by the American revolutionaries during the war.  One of their complaints against the British had concerned restrictions on expansion into Native lands to the west of the Appalachians.  Far from inhabiting wild prairies, the Native Americans there were settled and efficient farmers.    During the war one American Colonel ordered his troops to "cut up every Indian cornfield and burn every Indian town".  General George Clark, said that "to exceed them in barbarity, was and is, the only way to make war on Indians and gain a name among them".  The revolutionary state of Pennsylvania offered $1,000 for every Indian scalp, and some militiamen even dug up graves to scalp corpses.

Restrictions on westward expansion was not, however, the main reason for the revolution.

Britain's success in taking Canada from the French in 1760 was the key event.  It had been a financially expensive victory and led to British demands that Americans, un-represented at Westminster, nonetheless pay taxes for Imperial defence.  But, once the French threat to their north had been removed, the Americans saw little corresponding need for British military protection, and certainly did not want to have to pay for it.

The military tactics of the war are really well described by Robert Harvey, and each campaign is illuminated by good and simple maps.

Britain won most of the set piece battles.  Even when it had lost at Yorktown and was ready  to concede American independence, Britain still had two major armies in North America. It gave up because it was facing bankruptcy, and knew that, while it could command strongpoints, it could neither win over nor subdue the American countryside.

British public opinion had also turned against the war.  Whereas the Americans had finite war aims, the British could see no end to their endeavours.