Metropolitan Intervention: Britain’s Strategy for a New Colonial War

Abstract

The third chapter of this work is devoted to an examination of Britain’s strategy for the campaign of 1755. To begin this assessment, it is appropriate that the great historical figures who would formulate Britain’s response to unfolding events on the North American continent are studied; providing a clearer contextualization of the “Braddock Plan’s” political origins. Undoubtedly, the most significant of these characters were the Duke of Newcastle and the Duke of Cumberland, deeply polarizing figures both in their own time and posterity, who, with their respective cabals, jostled for power and influence in the formulation of an American strategy for 1755. This was, essentially, a divide that in today’s geopolitical lexicon would be considered a contest between “dove” and “hawk.” The Newcastle faction, determined to avoid a wider war with France, would play the role of the former. Cumberland, a very capable but profoundly uncompromising soldier-statesman, would epitomize the latter analogy. Ultimately, it was the belligerent Cumberland who would win this ideological clash of constitutional titans, and General Edward Braddock, a very conventional officer, distinctly of the Cumberland fold, would be given command of Britain’s quest for American pre-eminence. Soldiers from the regular establishment would also be deployed to the New World, making the British strategy for 1755 one of direct interventionism.¹