Colonial American military history is the military record of the Thirteen Colonies from their founding to the American Revolution in 1775. Beginning when on August 29, 1643, the Plymouth Colony Court allowed & established a military discipline to be erected and maintained.
Rangers
Rangers in North America served in the 17th and 18th-century wars between colonists and Native American tribes. Regular soldiers were not accustomed to frontier warfare and so Ranger companies were developed. Rangers were full-time soldiers employed by colonial governments to patrol between fixed frontier fortifications in reconnaissance, providing early warning of raids. In offensive operations, they were scouts and guides, locating villages and other targets for task forces drawn from the militia or other colonial troops.
The father of American ranging is Colonel Benjamin Church (c. 1639–1718).John Grenier. The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier. Cambridge University Press. 2005. p. 35 He was the captain of the first Ranger force in America (1676).John Grenier. The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier. Cambridge University Press. 2005. p. 33 Church was commissioned by Plymouth Colony Governor Josiah Winslow to form the first ranger company for King Philip's War. He later employed the company to raid Acadia during King William's War and Queen Anne's War.
Benjamin Church designed his force primarily to emulate Native American patterns of war. Toward this end, he endeavored to learn from Native Americans how to fight like Native Americans. Americans became rangers exclusively under the tutelage of the Indian allies. (Until the end of the colonial period, rangers depended on Indians as both allies and teachers.)John Grenier, p. 33-34 Church developed a special full-time unit mixing white colonists, selected for frontier skills, with allied Native Americans to carry out offensive strikes against hostile Native Americans in terrain where normal militia units were ineffective.
Under Church served the father and grandfather of two famous rangers of the eighteenth century: John Lovewell and John Gorham, respectively.The first way of war: American war making on the frontier, 1607–1814 By John Grenier, p. 38 Rogers' Rangers was established in 1751Churchill's Wizards: The British Genius for Deception, 1914–1945 (Rankin, Nicholas). p. 454 (2008 paperback) by Major Robert Rogers, who organized nine Ranger companies in the American colonies. Colonial Light infantry units organized during the French and Indian War were called "Rangers" and are often considered to be the spiritual birthplace of the modern Army Rangers.
Provincial troops
Provincial troops were raised by the colonial governors and legislatures for extended operations during the French and Indian Wars. The provincial troops differed from the militia, in that they were a full-time military organization conducting extended operations. They differed from the regular British Army, in that they were recruited only for one campaign season at the time. These forces were often recruited through a quota system applied to the militia. Officers were appointed by the provincial governments. During the eighteenth century militia service was increasingly seen as a prerogative of the social and economic well-established, while provincial troops came to be recruited from different and less deep-rooted members of the community."From Benjamin Franklin to Peter Collinson, 19 December 1756." Founders Online. Retrieved 2017-02-19.Shrader, Charles Reginald (1991). Reference Guide to United States Military History 1607-1815. New York: Sachem Publishing, p. 5-6.Robert K.Wright Jr, "Colonial Military Experience." The Society of Colonial Wars in Connecticut. Retrieved 2017-02-11.Stacey, C. P. (1974). "The British Forces in North America during the Seven Years' War." Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, vol. 3, p. xxviii.Coakley, Robert W. & Conn, Stetson (1975). The War of the American Revolution. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army, p. 11-12.McConnell, Michael N. (2004). Army & Empire. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, pp. 23, 58.Anderson, Fred (1984). A People's Army. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, pp. 13. 27, 50-52.Brumwell, Stephen (2002). Redcoats: The British Soldier and War in the Americas, 1755-1763. Cambridge University Press, p. 23.Cox, Caroline (2004). A Proper Sense of Honor. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press pp. 7-11.Newland, Samuel J. (2002). The Pennsylvania Militia: Defending the Commonwealth and the nation, 1669-1870. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Dept. of Military and Veterans Affairs, pp. 36-45.
The first provincial forces in British North America were organized in the 1670s, when several colonial governments raised ranger companies for one year's paid service to protect their borders (see above).Shrader 1991, p. 6. The major operations during King William's War were conducted by provincial troops from Massachusetts Bay. During Queen Anne's War, provincial troops from Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and New Hampshire made up the bulk of the English forces.Watkins, Walter Kendall (1898). Soldiers in the Expedition to Canada in 1690. Boston: Society of Colonial Wars in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, pp. 2, 26-28. During King George's War, the land forces that took Louisbourg were entirely supplied by Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.The Penny Cyclopedia. London: Charles Knight and Co., 1843, p. 8. During the French and Indian War, the British government in London took an increasingly more leading part, relegating the provincial troops to a non-combat role, largely as pioneers and transportation troops, while the bulk of the fighting was done by the regular British Army. However the contributions of Connecticut, Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island were essential.Stacey 1974, p. xxviii.
Militia The beginning of the United States military lies in local governments which created militias that enrolled nearly all free white men. The militia was not employed as a fighting force in major operations outside the local jurisdiction. Instead, the colony asked for (and paid) volunteers serving in ranger and other provincial troops (see above), many of whom were also militia members. The local Indian threat ended by 1725 in most places, after which the militia system was little used except for local ceremonial roles.John Shy, A People Numerous and Armed: Reflections on the Military Struggle for American Independence (2nd ed. 2008)
The militia system was revived at the end of the colonial era, as the American Revolution approached; weapons were accumulated and intensive training began. The militia played a major fighting role in the Revolution, especially in expelling the British from Boston in 1776 and capturing the British invasion force at Saratoga in 1777. However most of the fighting was handled by the Continental Army, comprising regular soldiers.
Indian wars Military actions in the colonies were the result of conflicts with Native Americans in the period of the colonization by the settlers, such as the Pequot War of 1637, King Philip's War in 1675, the Susquehannock war in 1675–77,See "The Susquehannock War 1675-77" and the Yamasee War in 1715. Father Rale's War (1722–1725) happened in Maine and Nova Scotia. There also occurred slave uprisings, such as the Stono Rebellion in 1739. Finally, there was Father Le Loutre's War, which also involved Acadians, in the lead-up to the French and Indian War.
Dutch wars
Kieft's War was a conflict between Dutch settlers and Indians in the colony of New Netherland from 1643 to 1645. The fighting involved raids and counter-raids. It was bloody in proportion to the population; more than 1,600 natives were killed at a time when the European population of New Amsterdam was only 250.
Spanish wars The British fought the Spanish in the War of Jenkins' Ear, 1739–1748. After 1742, the war merged into the larger War of the Austrian Succession involving most of the powers of Europe. Georgia beat back a Spanish invasion of Georgia in 1742, and some sporadic border fighting continued. The war merged into King George's War, which ended with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748.
France and Britain at war Beginning in 1689, the colonies also frequently became involved in a series of four major wars between England (later Britain) and France for control of North America, the most important of which were Queen Anne's War, in which the British won French Acadia (Nova Scotia), and the final French and Indian War (1754–1763), when France lost all of Canada. This final war gave thousands of colonists military experience, including George Washington, which they put to use during the American Revolution.
Britain and France fought a series of four French and Indian Wars, followed with another war in 1778 when France joined the Americans in the American Revolution. The French settlers in New France were outnumbered 15–1 by the 13 American colonies,In 1690, New France had about 12,000 inhabitants, while the American colonists numbered over 200,000. By 1760, the numbers were about 60,000 and 1.6 million, respectively. so the French relied heavily on Indian allies.
The wars were long and bloody, causing immense suffering for everyone involved. In the long run, the Indians were the biggest losers; many were on the losing side, as Spain and France were defeated as thus could provide no further support to them. Frontier settlers were exposed to sudden Indian raids; many were killed or captured, and even more were forced back from the frontier. One profitable form of wartime activity in which colonists engaged was privateering—legalized piracy against enemy merchant ships. Another was hunting enemy Indians for the purpose of scalping them and claiming the cash bounty offered by colonial governments.Anderson (1960)
King William's War: 1689–1697
King William's War (1689–97) (also known as the "Nine Years' War")A short history is online by Evarts Boutell Greene, Provincial America, 1690-1740 (1905) ch 8 online pp 119-35. was a phase of the larger Anglo-French conflict which occurred in India as well as North America. New France and the Wabanaki Confederacy joined forces to launch several raids against New England settlements south of present-day Maine, whose border New France defined as the Kennebec River in southern Maine.• •
Sir William Phips moved with his New England militia in 1690 to take the French strongholds at Port Royal and at Quebec, the latter commanded by Comte de Frontenac, the governor of New France. Phips conquered the capital of Acadia and various other communities in the colony (e.g., Battle of Chedabucto). (Present-day Maine and New Brunswick remained contested territories between New England and New France.) Phips's written ultimatum demanding Fontenac's surrender at Quebec prompted Frontenac to say that his reply would come only "from the mouths of my cannon and muskets."
The New England militia had to reckon with Quebec's formidable natural defenses, its superior number of soldiers, and the coming of winter, and Phips finally sailed back to Boston with his hungry, smallpox-ridden, and demoralized force. His failure shows a growing recognition of the need to replicate European combat techniques and to move closer to the war policy in London in order to achieve military success.K. A. J. McLay, "Wellsprings of a 'World War': an Early English Attempt to Conquer Canada During King William's War, 1688–97," Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 2006 34(2): 155–175,