As this year is the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it seems fitting to review a history about the Revolutionary War. In fact, I intend to do a few more such reviews in the coming months.

Let’s start however with a book that looks at that Revolution from a very different perspective.

Historian Barbara Tuchman is most well known for her early classic, The Guns of August, a book that was made famous when John Kennedy repeatedly referred to it during the Cuban missile crisis. Kennedy’s recommendation not only brought the book to the attention of the general public, it made Tuchman’s career. From that day forth, her work has always been received with accolades and enthusiasm and uncritical respect.

I am here however to break that bubble, though only partly. I just finished reading The First Salute, Tuchman’s 1988 history of the Revolutionary War. Rather than tell the tale from the point of view of the Americans, as done by most historians, Tuchman’s work looks at the war from the point of view of Europe, and thus gives us a much larger and very worthwhile context.

For this I complement Tuchman highly. Though it is well known that the arrival of the French fleet off the coast of Virginia was crucial in forcing the British army to surrender to Washington at Yorktown, the background behind that arrival has generally been given short shrift by historians. Tuchman does not, describing in detail the political maneuvering necessary between the American envoys in France and France’s government to make that fleet happen. She also describes the attitudes of the Dutch and Spain to the war, and how and why they eventually moved to support America, even though there were many reasons for them to stay out.

Her book also gives us the British perspective, revealing the amazing and continuous failures of its government and generals to wage the war with any enthusiasm or skill. It appears almost from the start that the British had no great desire to win, and that malaise and overconfidence more than anything resulted in their eventual defeat.

For example, the British never took Washington or his army seriously. When Cornwallis learned that he was about to be surrounded and trapped in Yorktown, he had time to leave. He instead sat on his hands and did nothing.

This British contempt for America was also illustrated in how it treated America politically. For example, one of the main American complaints was it was not allowed its own representatives in the British parliament, a decision I had always believed Britain applied to all its colonies. Tuchman shows this assumption was false. While it denied the North American colonies representation, its plantations in the West Indies were given from twelve to fifteen seats. The British government considered these colonies far more important, gave them respect, and thus did not lose them. To the thirteen North American colonies it instead thumbed its nose.

Great Britain’s overconfidence was also made evident by how it viewed its European counterparts. It never considered the French a serious or grave threat, and took little action to prevent its fleet from arriving in America. And it was so overconfident of victory that it was not only willing to fight the Americans on a different continent across a vast ocean, but to also at the same time declare war on France, Spain, and the Dutch, despite having limited resources not equal to the task.

Thus, Tuchman’s wider perspective of the war is very enlightening. The nature of colonies and its frontier culture always made it unlikely that Britain could have ever defeated it, but Tuchman shows us that Britain itself earned that defeat, by its own incompetence, ignorance, and overall contempt for its opponent.

Tuchman’s book however has some serious flaws, not in her facts or analysis but in her writing. First, her chronology of events in the first half of the book is often confusing, jumping forward and back sometimes in the most jumbled manner. I often had to struggle to figure out how different events fit together, as she often mixed up the time table quite unnecessarily.

Second, while her analysis of events is cogent and almost always correct, she inserts this analysis over and over again in practically every paragraph. Since her conclusions are almost always the same, she ends up repeating herself incessantly. A good editor should have cut much of this dissection, but I suspect Tuchman’s reputation and fame made it difficult to challenge her.

“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all
the inhabitants thereof.” Photo credit: William Zhang

Thus, if you are an aficionado of the Revolutionary War and wish to learn all you can about it, I would recommend this book highly, because it provides a perspective not seen in many other histories of that time.

If however you want to sit down and read a well-written and enjoyable history of that war, this is not the book to read. You will have to struggle through the first half before it begins to pick up speed and become more coherent chronologically in the second half.

Above all, however, this history does illustrate what Washington himself believed, that God himself was on his side, that “the same bountiful Providence, which has relieved us in a variety of difficulties before, will enable us to emerge from them ultimately and crown our struggles with success.”

Tuchman illustrates the almost miraculous confluence of events that made that success possible. And in looking at those facts, it sure looks like God was playing favorites in making the birth of the United States possible.