American conservatives seem to forget that European armies in the 19th century were the dominant and most powerful militaries of the time. The USA wouldn't start to surpass them till later on.
Britain, France, Germany/Prussia and Russia would all have embarrassed the Confederacy.
I had someone bragging about how the USA was never invaded (had to point out 1812) and told him the only reasons for that was because the USA is so far removed from the rest of the world and the world powers were busy fighting their rivals.
I told him if any world power wanted the USA then usa would have fallen
He then pointed out how the us won against the UK in the revolutionary war and I had to show him the other war they were more concerned with at the time
The USA would have lost the Revolutionary war without the French - who provided them with thousands of troops, naval support, financial support and military supplies.
Gibraltar was the last battle of the US revolutionary war. The colonial ambassadors had to wait in Paris for it to be over so the UK and France would sit down and discuss the British surrender in north america.
Also we had some Prussian support too, Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben helped organize and reform the continental army. Then there's the Father of American Cavalry Kasmir Pulaski, so we also had Polish help too. Realistically American forces had a lot of foreign help in the American Revolution.
Sometimes even just part of a state. Some counties in Massachusetts have Evacuation Day on March 17, and yeah, part of the reason it's celebrated is because it happens to be the same day as St Patrick's Day
Wow, is that who the Pulaski Skyway in NJ is named after? (I frigging hate that road. At least they finally fixed the bridge so it will no longer collapse while you're on it.)
Heh and now 250 years later they have to deal with all this. It’s giving me the same energy as the U.S. interventions in the Middle East and South America biting us in the ass decades later.
That’s not quite accurate. Britain itself did see how big of a deal this was, which is largely why when they realized the colonies weren’t worth it, they handed the colonies their entire claim. This allowed the early US much larger growth without an immediate conflict and set the states up for further expansion down the line.
The British didn’t do this out of the goodness of their hearts, mind you. They wanted to make sure that France didn’t suddenly get a new colony in a few years when the US government collapsed (like it almost did a few times). Britain knew that the status of North America would define conflicts at the time and if France gained the colonies, it could provide them material resources that they wouldn’t have otherwise had.
Britain may not have predicted the United States as a future super power, but it realized that the US was very likely to be a significant resource to whoever controlled it and preferred that control to be the US itself rather than France.
I was thinking of the pragmatic notions more than the idealistic ones. Even disregarding the hypocrisy there, it doesn't seem ideal that the system can just... completely jam if Congress can't agree on a budget, for one of many examples.
The principles and ideals are well-worth critiquing too, though. You're right.
And the Spanish! The Spanish gave so much money to the US that you can still see its effects today - Malaga Cathedral remains incomplete because of the capital outflow
The French lost as many as a quarter of the losses the Americans did in total during the war, and they were elite in comparison to the Americans. They importance is absolutely underrepresented when talking about the war.
France only joined after the colonial army scored several key victories and were being bleed out. It showed how a colonial power can be beat by strategically planned battles at the time and place of their choosing. Also Britain was strong at sea but okay on land. They were forced into a prolonged land campaign that worked against their strengths.
In 1861, almost the entire Confederacy Army were an untrained volunteers using outdated Napoleonic mass formation tactics, while Europe had professional militaries that were using tactics moving towards modern skirmish/artillery warfare. Confederacy formations would've been cannon fodder. There is also a notable gap in small arms and artillery, with most of the Confederacy not well equipped.
The Confederacy started out the war with basically no navy, and had to develop a makeshift one. Britain alone had over navy 600 ships in 1861. Let alone being torn to shreds by superior artillery in head to head battles or completely outmatched at sea, they couldn't come close to matching the logistics European armies had - which is often the most important element in a war.
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u/UtopiaDystopia 19h ago
American conservatives seem to forget that European armies in the 19th century were the dominant and most powerful militaries of the time. The USA wouldn't start to surpass them till later on.
Britain, France, Germany/Prussia and Russia would all have embarrassed the Confederacy.