Few stereotypes from the American Revolution are as well-developed as that of the soldier who fought for Britain. The caricature is ubiquitous: A one-dimensional “lobster,” the “bloody-back” regular, motivated by selfishness, who fought for the love of money. He was heartless and cowardly; a pawn of the king, inept on the battlefield because of his old European ways. Here was a convenient foil for the resourceful Patriot, who fought valiantly on the winning side and for all the right reasons—family, farms and freedom. In “Noble Volunteers,” Don Hagist invites us to peer beneath the red coat. What do we find?
One central insight is that “there was no ‘typical’ British soldier.” British regulars encompassed “such a range of nationalities, ages, skills, and socioeconomic backgrounds” that we are better off “appreciating how they were different rather than how they were the same.” What, for instance, motivated them to enlist? The reasons were as many as the men who joined, with neither unemployment nor impoverishment ranking high on the list. Most were between the ages of 20 and 25, but little else united them. Some sought new careers. Others to escape overbearing mothers, or wives. Others still were moved by wanderlust or boredom. Mr. Hagist is skeptical of accounts, such as Sylvia Frey’s “The British Soldier in America,” that draw conclusions about soldiers’ motives from quantitative data. Too much was idiosyncratic, a mystery.
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