Stephan Brumwell take on the Redcoats vs the Redskins

Lionel Wagner
   For anyone ever wanting to know information of the British redcoat army in America and their tactical innovations for bush fighting then the book "RedCoats" by Stephan Brumwell is for you.

This book covers the British redcoat army in the Americas of 1755-1763 and Brummell does a good piece about how the best army in the world had to retrain themselves and adapt quick to an effective American Indian hit and run method that threatened British power. The complete discipline of the British army was necessary but proved useless when fighting in the woods against French and Indians who too no quarter and refused to wage war in the traditional European sense. The flexibility and innovation of the British army during this time period is what helped it overcome a whole variegated list of enemies in North America from escaped slaves in Mantiquita to Mohawk braves in upstate New York.

The book talks about the eventual development and improvement of a light infantry for the British arm and all these new tactics,training and strategies of warfare would come at a cost that ultimately would have require new tax payers in the colonies to foot the bill. The colonists just had no appreciation to the costs of irregular and perpetual warfare with the original inhabitants of the north American continent as wilderness fighting it was tribes like the Seneca who lived off the land and had time to devote for constant warfare. This writing covers the intense fighting between the redcoats and the redskins that weakened both groups and soon established the Yankees as masters of this massive land. The role of the Scottish highlanders whose poverty enabled them to go and join the ranks of their one time enemies and fight for the United crown should be looked more closely as author Stephan Brumwell does quite well in this book. The British empire effectively new how to transplant young men from a undeveloped region and take these scots and Irish to faraway lands to fight other peoples instead of their own homelands. This is a tactic America has established two hundred years after these French and Indian wars and pretty much emulated getting their poor to join the military for the overseas prestige and influence of a global trade class.