Napoleon Series Archive 2018

Coming-Prisoners of War & Politics of Vengeance

Somewhat OT

Captives of Liberty: Prisoners of War and the Politics of Vengeance in the American Revolution (Early American Studies)
T. Cole Jones
Series: Early American Studies
Hardcover: 376 pages
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press (November 15, 2019)
ISBN-13: 9780812251692

Contrary to popular belief, the American Revolutionary War was not a limited and restrained struggle for political self-determination. From the onset of hostilities, British authorities viewed their American foes as traitors to be punished, and British abuse of American prisoners, both tacitly condoned and at times officially sanctioned, proliferated. Meanwhile, more than seventeen thousand British and allied soldiers fell into American hands during the Revolution. For a fledgling nation that could barely afford to keep an army in the field, the issue of how to manage prisoners of war was daunting.

Captives of Liberty examines how America's founding generation grappled with the problems posed by prisoners of war, and how this influenced the wider social and political legacies of the Revolution. When the struggle began, according to T. Cole Jones, revolutionary leadership strove to conduct the war according to the prevailing European customs of military conduct, which emphasized restricting violence to the battlefield and treating prisoners humanely. However, this vision of restrained war did not last long. As the British denied customary protections to their American captives, the revolutionary leadership wasted no time in capitalizing on the prisoners' ordeals for propagandistic purposes. Enraged, ordinary Americans began to demand vengeance, and they viewed British soldiers and their German and Native American auxiliaries as appropriate targets. This cycle of violence spiraled out of control, transforming the struggle for colonial independence into a revolutionary war.

In illuminating this history, Jones contends that the violence of the Revolutionary War had a profound impact on the character and consequences of the American Revolution. Captives of Liberty not only provides the first comprehensive analysis of revolutionary American treatment of enemy prisoners but also reveals the relationship between America's political revolution and the war waged to secure it.

Review

"An impressive treatment of the subject of prisoners of war in the American Revolution and an antidote to nostalgia, Captives of Liberty reminds us that the American Revolution was a brutal conflict in which the atrocities were not exclusive to the southern theater nor to any one side. It is a significant contribution to the historiography of the Revolution."—Andrew O'Shaughnessy, author of The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire

"In Captives of Liberty, T. Cole Jones deftly challenges perceptions of a 'civilized' and restrained American Revolution by illuminating how the management of prisoners, whether inadvertently dire due to provisioning problems or deliberately grim as a political weapon, tracks a course of escalation from proportional retaliation to bloody revenge in the conflict. This superb and engrossing study presents a war not only for but also between hearts and minds when the treatment of captives put popular sentiments, political decisions, and military custom at odds in a struggle to reconcile emotions and vengeance with law, order, and honor."—Holly Mayer, author of Belonging to the Army: Camp Followers and Community during the American Revolution