Description
This book moves beyond the campaign orientation of most regimental histories to explore how the Royal Americans helped forge new Atlantic connections. Campbell draws on the regiment’s wealthy archival legacy—including the private papers of its first three colonels-in-chief and of mercenary field officers—to describe more fully than previous accounts the lives these soldiers led in the context of their times.
Campbell takes a closer look at the motivations of regimental founder James Prevost, a Swiss mercenary in the courts of Kings George II and George III, and explores how migration to The us attracted rank-and-file soldiers. He examines the unit’s training, deployment, and operational conduct to reveal the usage of new tactics, and also chronicles a year in the soldiers’ lives as they attended to hard labor in preparation for the summer’s campaigns. He also traces the postwar activities of these veterans, showing how many of them, by taking up land grants they had been promised upon enlistment, helped settle the frontier and expand commerce.
Fairly than center of attention on up to now documented animosity between British regulars and provincials, Campbell reveals how soldiers from different backgrounds formed a multiracial, multilingual society that reflected a actually cosmopolitan transatlantic identity