July 4 marks the 250th anniversary of the day America’s colonists issued a declaration stating their desire to be free of British rule. The anniversary is an occasion to revisit two questions that are fundamental to US history: what motivated the American colonies to turn against their overlords across the Atlantic? And how did an outmanned colonial military defeat a superior British fighting force?
An unlikely country – India – factors into both answers. Let’s review them, in reverse chronological order.
In April 1775, war broke out between the American colonies and the British. The colonists won that first battle of what became known as the Revolutionary War. While the British had more experience, more troops, and more money, they could never conquer the colonists. For several years, the two sides battled to a stalemate. But the tide turned in 1781. What changed? To answer that, let’s look at a battle fought the previous year – in India.
Soldiers from the East India Company – a de facto arm of the British government – were enmeshed in what became known as the Second Anglo-Mysore War. The battle stemmed from Britain’s seizure of a port controlled by the French government in Mahé, on the Malabar coast, in...
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