The Strategies and Politics of the American War of Independence

Political-military strategies in the American War of Independence evolved interactively in response to a combination of diverse multifaceted factors, cultural, ideological and psychological, no less than material, tactical or geographical. On the Patriot side, fragmented and militia-oriented as it was, the ending of any hope to bring Canada into the revolutionary front, or the growth of confidence in guerrilla warfare and international support, or the persistence of a widespread fear that Britain might strike back easily, were to prove as much important as the dissemination of a new notion of nationhood and the creation of a Continental Army. On the British side, passivity in Europe and leniency towards the rebels stood as the main tenets of a “satisfied” power which longed for a restoration in America that would be of limited value, if concessions had to be made to ensure international neutrality, and should a substantial garrison be raised and left to hold an irreparably disaffected population down.Nella guerra d’Indipendenza americana le strategie politico-militari evolsero interattivamente sulla base di diversi fattori dalle molteplici sfaccettature, di ordine culturale, ideologico e psicologico non meno che materiale, tattico o geografico. Sul versante patriota, diviso com’era in entità coloniali separate e propense a seguire lo schema classico delle tradizionali milizie civili, l’addio a ogni speranza di tenere il Canada nello schieramento rivoluzionario, o il crescere della fiducia nelle azioni di guerriglia e nel sostegno internazionale, o il persistere del diffuso timore che la Madrepatria potesse ribaltare facilmente le sorti del conflitto, dovevano rivelarsi altrettanto importanti dell’istituzione di un Esercito Continentale e della disseminazione di una nuova idea di nazione. Sul versante britannico, il disimpegno dall’Europa e la mitezza verso i ribelli furono i criteri guida di una potenza “soddisfatta”, che aspirava a reimporsi nelle Americhe, ma non a costo di dover prima scendere a patti con le altre potenze europee, o dover poi presidiare militarmente colonie ormai definitivamente e irreparabilmente risentite

James Franklin Bell : hard war in the Philippines.

This thesis surveys the military history of the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902. In particular, this thesis looks at that war through the lens of hard war as a way of war. It begins with an introduction to hard war as a concept and a historiography of the Philippine-American War and continues with an overview of the events leading up to the war. The first two chapters deal with the wider role of the U.S. Army during the war, while the third chapter examines the role of James Franklin Bell, and American officer, and his command of the Third Separate Brigade in Batangas Province. This thesis is an attempt to place the Philippine-American War into the discussion of hard war in American military history

Freeing France: The Allies, the Résistance, and the JEDBURGHs

General Dwight D. Eisenhower used the Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur to conduct a guerilla war against German forces during the Allied campaigns in France. The study below examines the Allied politics, the nature and the development of the French Résistance, and the actions of the German forces in France to evaluate how useful the deployment of 93 JEDBURGH teams were in their role to conduct an effective guerilla war aiding Allied military objectives. Disagreements between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and resistance leader General Charles de Gaulle led to Eisenhower's inability to get the most out of the effort. Under certain conditions, Eisenhower and the French with British and American support achieved limited success. Eisenhower's recognition of de Gaulle's authority over the Résistance and his insistence on placing a French commander in charge of the effort proved to be the single greatest factor in the successes gained with the JEDBURGHs

Irregular auxiliaries after 1945

Collaboration with native auxiliaries in wars in the peripheries of the international system is an age-old practice, the relevance of which is likely to increase in the twenty-first century. Yet, the parameters of such collaboration are understudied. This article aims to contribute to the nascent yet fragmentary scholarship on the use of native auxiliaries. It identifies three intellectual templates of the collaboration between Western regular forces and native auxiliaries: the eighteenth-century model of auxiliary ‘partisans’ as tactical complements to regular armed forces; the nineteenth-century transformation of the ‘partisan’ into the irregular guerrilla fighter and the concomitant rise of the ‘martial races’ discourse; and, finally, the post-1945 model of the loyalist auxiliary as a symbol of the political legitimacy of the counter-insurgent side in wars of decolonisation and post-colonial insurgencies. The article focuses on the rise of loyalism after 1945 in particular, a phenomenon that it seeks to understand within the broader context of irregular warfare and the moral reappraisal of irregular fighters after the Second World War.PostprintPeer reviewe

War for sale : Peninsular War veterans' memoirs in the long nineteenth Century (1808-1914)

Defence date: 06 December 2018Examining Board: Professor Lucy Riall, European University Institute (Supervisor); Professor Regina Grafe, European University Institute (Second Reader); Professor Philip Dwyer, University of Newcastle, Australia; Emeritus Professor John Horne, Trinity College Dublin.Author awarded 2018 1st prize of the EUI three-minute [film] PhD Competition in the Social SciencesThis is a study of the development of war writing in the nineteenth century, showing how the authorial impulses of veterans from the Napoleonic Wars interacted with a booming publishing industry across Europe to forge a new relationship between ex-soldiers, the book market, and the cultural representation of war. Focussing on the hundreds of military memoirs written by British, French, and Spanish veterans of the Peninsular War (1808-1814), I propose a new methodology for the study of these sources, departing from the current state of literature with a deliberate emphasis on their public, political, and commercial aspects. Beginning with the political aims of the old soldiers who wrote these books, I examine their attempts to re-write history, reform the army, and defend themselves from controversy. Using evidence from the archives of publishing houses, I reveal the immense and frenzied editing, printing, and marketing activity which was concealed behind the facade of a simple soldier’s tale, challenging us to start thinking about soldiers as professional authors, aiming to influence the broader writing of the story of war. I then explore the afterlives of these war memoirs, following the books once they outlived their authors. In the hands of later editors, family members, and commercially-minded publishers, many memoirs changed dramatically, selling an updated idea of the experience of war. I also consider the widespread phenomenon of reprinting and translation, which carried soldiers’ tales far beyond their home countries and into new languages, appropriating them into the memory-making processes of other nations. Throughout, the comparison with Spain acts as a counterweight to the more heavily-studied France and Britain, allowing me to challenge prevailing ideas about the origins and format of military autobiography in Europe, as well as to explore the development of still-persistent divisions between the different ‘national’ narratives of the same war.Chapter 4, 'The myth of the accidental author' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article: 'Accidental authors? : soldiers’ tales of the peninsular war and the secrets of the publishing process' (2018) in the journal History workshop journal. Chapter 7, 'A war with three names: circulation, translation and transnational memory' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article: 'Traduire la guerre au XIXe siècle : réinventions et circulations des mémoires militaires de la guerre d’Espagne, 1808-1914' (2017) in the journal Hypothèses

The Rites of Statehood: Violence and Sovereignty in Spanish America, 1789-1821

This essay explores the varieties of expressions of political violence during the revolutionary conjuncture, 1789 to 1821, across Spanish America from New Spain to Buenos Aires. It challenges some of the familiar ways in which historians have pointed to violence as an inevitable effect of the end of empire, and instead argues that violence became a means to engage in the political process that brought down empire. At the same time, it argues that the role of violence in bringing down the old regime and creating new institutions and habits of rule and protest was at least as important as the role of the public sphere and elections, which historians have recently accented. Indeed, the essay suggests ways in which historians of the public sphere might consider the rituals and languages of violence as part of public conduct, while it was the opening of the public sphere that created a means, or space, to push vindictive patterns of violence into more vindictive directions. Violence was not of a piece, a constant display of carnage. The essay accordingly seeks to illustrate the varieties of uses of political violence and its changes over time, from the first crises of the 1790s to the widespread savagery of the 1810s