It seems that way, but Britain was not all in on that war. The 1770s and 1780s was definitely not a peak time for Britain. The government was having financial problems and military spending was very low. The peak for Britain was later on in the 19th century.
I think Britain could have won that war if they had really wanted to, given enough time and resources, but there was a great reluctance to spend the resources to win it, money in particular.
There was lack of will on the part of the British government combined with a low point in British military funding. The British government (Parliament, the King was a figurehead by this time) was simply unwilling to convert the country to a war footing.
The political leaders kept hoping they could win the war with a low level of military funding and save money, which was in short supply. So the war effort was underfunded and undermanned. In the end, the Whig party (who had been against the war) came to power and negotiated an end to it. Wars are expensive, and the Whigs didn't think this one was worth the expenditure.
Compare that sad performance to the Napoleonic Wars 20 years later. Britain was on full war footing and spending huge quantities of money (going deep into debt in the process) on their military. They were cranking out large numbers of ships and training large armies.
When the War of 1812 broke out, the British were uninterested in fighting it. They were busy with Napoleon at the time, and the American war was a sideshow with few resources devoted to it compared to what was being devoted to Europe. Even then, their vastly improved military and lavish spending resulted in a much better performance than the Revolutionary War.
In the end, once the Americans were tired of fighting, a peace was negotiated. The British were uninterested in keeping that war going any longer than necessary. It was costing them money and they had better fish to fry.
I love reading about the War of 1812. I think it is easily the most avoidable of all U.S. wars.
The U.S. declared war on Great Britain as negotiations to roll back impressment and trade restrictions were finally progressing. Then, after some impressive U.S. victories repelling British invasions (following some impressive British victories), none of the original grievances were addressed in the treaty.
Wouldn't that be the definition of a proxy war? However, even that claim is suspect. The Continental Navy was a joke and had zero effect on the war. The French fought a global naval campaign with the world's largest navy. They also supplied the vast majority of gunpowder, cannons, and muskets used in the initial years of the war, and landed several sizable armies. At any point in the conflict the loss of French aid would have meant instant defeat for the colonists. The French or French allies engaged in more or less continuous warfare for decades both before and after the American Revolutionary War.
It's most accurate to say that the American Revolution was a notable but not decisive campaign in the Second Hundred Years War. Americans blow their participation in the conflict wildly out of proportion -- patriotic textbook revision has produced an epic creation mythology. Panamanian schools seem similarly to omit the role of the US in the creation of that country. It's not just that history is written by the winners, it's that it's continually rewritten by the winners.
And do you know, I had started that reply with a fuller explanation, but reconsidered it as a waste of words. I had thought I had been fairly clear: the Continentals did not do most of the fighting, unless you choose to exclude whole categories of other fighting that went on before, during, and after the war.
