Francis Rawdon-Hastings, Marquess of Hastings: Soldier, Peer of the Realm, Governor-General of India.

Francis Rawdon-Hastings, Marquess of Hastings: Soldier, Peer of the Realm, Governor-General of India. By Paul David Nelson. (Madison and Teaneck, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005. Pp. 238. $47.50, ISBN 0-8386-4071-0.)

The Southern Strategy: Britain's Conquest of South Carolina and Georgia, 1775-1780. By David K. Wilson. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005. Pp. xviii, 341. $39.95, ISBN 1-57003-573-3.)

For British politicians and soldiers faced with the daunting challenge of bringing the rebellious American colonies to heel after 1775, one belief, above all others, came to offer a tantalizing hope of victory: that the Carolinas and Georgia were fundamentally Loyalist in sentiment, capable of providing a secure base from which royal troops could march north to roll up the rebel heartlands.

Despite disappointing beginnings, which warned that predictions of Loyalist strength and commitment were wildly optimistic, when Britain finally shifted its major war effort from the northern and middle colonies to the South in 1780, the strategy soon delivered spectacular results: one rebel army was captured at Charlestown, while another--led by General Horatio Gates, the victor of Saratoga--was routed in a pitched battle at Camden. But these successes were deceptive, and the tide of victory swiftly receded: little over a year later, Lord Charles Cornwallis, Britain's local commander, was obliged to surrender his own army at Yorktown, effectively marking the end of Britain's attempt to subdue America.

David K. Wilson's The Southern Strategy: Britain's Conquest of South Carolina and Georgia, 1775-1780 provides a sound new narrative of the southern campaigns, from the first botched launching of the strategy in 17751776 to its apparent vindication in the summer of 1780. Wilson's survey of operations is grounded in an impressive mass of data, which allows him not only to question the fine detail of previous accounts--for example, troop strengths and casualty returns--but also to challenge broader interpretations of the war itself. An example is Wilson's careful analysis of the Savannah garrison that bloodily repulsed a Franco-American assault in 1779. This account convincingly disproves claims that the majority of the defenders were Loyalists; and of those Loyalists who were present, many came from the North, enabling Wilson to dispute suggestions that the conflict in the South was essentially a civil war.

The stance adopted by Wilson is admirably unbiased, even when exploring such controversial episodes as Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton's so-called massacre of Virginia Continentals at the Waxhaws, South Carolina, in May 1780. His book displays deep local knowledge, a strength apparent, for example, in his own excellent maps. Occasionally, this intensely regional focus underplays the wider strategic situation. This perhaps explains the surprising omission of what remains the standard study of British strategy--Piers Mackesy's The War for America, 1775-1783 (London, 1964)--from the list of sources consulted.

Overall, Wilson's approach is both thoughtful and valuable, and it can only be hoped that another volume that explores the southern strategy's high-water mark and dramatic collapse in 1780-1781 will follow.

These same campaigns loom large in Paul David Nelson's concise but deeply researched biography, Francis Rawdon-Hastings, Marquess of Hastings: Soldier, Peer of the Realm, Governor-General of India. As its subtitle makes clear, Nelson's subject followed a distinguished and wide-ranging career as a soldier and administrator, one in which he went through several changes of name and title. Nelson chronicles Rawdon's political life, which was blighted by an unfortunate association with the profligate and disloyal George, Prince of Wales; his military appointments during the war against revolutionary France; and his subsequent efforts to safeguard and expand Britain's territories in India. However, it was Rawdon's military apprenticeship in North America, where he fought from 1775 to 1781, that clearly marked the high point of his service. Indeed, while far from uneventful, the remainder of Rawdon's life was something of an anticlimax. Not surprising, it is these early years of American service that receive the most detailed coverage from Nelson, accounting for half of his text.

Nelson has already shown himself to be a prolific and workmanlike biographer of what might be dubbed the supporting cast of British-American military history in the Revolutionary era. Rawdon too fits this profile: a colorful and significant figure, but one who nonetheless falls short of true front-rank importance. Yet, for students of the American Revolutionary War, Rawdon certainly merits close consideration. He epitomized those hard-line British officers who felt not the slightest sympathy for their opponents and who never lost faith in the possibility of ultimate victory. Such optimism is all the more understandable when one appreciates that Rawdon's personal experience of war in America--like that of many other British soldiers--was overwhelmingly one of victory. Rawdon avoided the final debacle at Yorktown. His health broken by hard campaigning, he secured leave to return to Britain, but not before underlining his ruthless credentials by ordering the execution of Colonel Isaac Hayne, a South Carolinian who had broken his oath of allegiance to Great Britain. This act earned Rawdon the undying hatred of the Revolutionaries; and it was fortunate for him that when the ship taking him back to Britain was soon after intercepted by a hostile privateer, his captors were French, not American.

Without doubt, Rawdon was a zealous and gifted commander, but his skillfully handled combats--notably Hobkirk's Hill in April 1781, where he outmaneuvered the very able Nathanael Greene--were miniature in scale and virtually irrelevant to the wider strategic picture. Here Rawdon's experience reflected the realities of Britain's war effort in the South. As both of the books reviewed here emphasize, no amount of tactical proficiency could offset the logistical problem of waging a war three thousand miles from home or compensate for that inescapable flaw in the southern strategy--the woeful failure of Loyalist support to match the expectations of Whitehall strategists.

STEPHEN BRUMWELL

Amsterdam