John D. Roche
When the Ends Become the Means: The British Occupation of New York City, 1776–1783
This paper will investigate military occupation in the Age of Revolutions by examining the British occupation of New York City during the American War of Independence. As the most securely- and longest continually-held American city, New York offers fascinating insights into the evolution of occupation policy as the war became a quagmire and Britain had to respond to changing strategic realities. The British Army’s initial counter-revolutionary efforts in New York between 1776 and 1777 relied upon decisively defeating the Continental Army. As a result, the British Army implemented martial law in the territory they controlled and crafted occupation policies which promised to support military victory by minimizing civilian interference. After the French openly joined the war in 1778, the British radically altered their strategy. Instead of militarily defeating the Americans and then reestablishing government, the British sought to defeat the rebels by normalizing local government first. Their purpose was twofold: first, empowering the civilian population would improve cooperation and therefore increase the British Army’s ability to mobilize resources for the war effort. Second, they sought a propaganda victory by ameliorating the civilians’ hardships and demonstrating the benefits of imperial rule. The basic outline of this strategic shift is well known to historians of the war, but the detailed processes of “normalizing local government” remain obscure. This paper will explore this process through examining the garrison commandant, the British officer responsible for maintaining order within the city, who played the lead role in this pacification effort. Although wartime exigencies prevented the full restoration of civil government, successive commandants and their appointees created hybrid civil-military courts, regulated the economy, and provided for both the poor and refugees.
John D. Roche is a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force. He graduated from the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) in 1997 with a major in military history. In 2002 he completed his first M.A. in early American history at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He finished his second M.A. in the spring of 2011 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Atlantic history. In the summer of 2012 the Air Force assigned him to the Department of History at USAFA for a second teaching tour.
