This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, August 10, 2009.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Revolutionary War put on display the tone-deafness of the British monarchy.

Robert McDonald, associate professor of history at the United States Military Academy

at West Point says the experience of the British has lessons to offer other countries that might wish to engage in adventures abroad.

In one of your talks here at Cato University, you talked about the British experience in the

Revolutionary War and you called it how to lose an empire.

Right. When you described how the continental army treated civilians versus how the British treated

civilians, the continental army did not appropriate people's property, British had no regard for that, and

the first thing that popped into my head was, this is terrible counterinsurgency.

If you're trying to beat back a threat that is emerging from the native population,

you need to give the other natives reason to support you.

And they just utterly failed to do that.

I think that's a fair observation.

It's not fair to say that the Continental Army never

appropriated people's property, but they were very scrupulous

about writing people receipts, recognizing that property had been taken.

One general in particular, Nathaniel Green was especially exemplary in the American South

and the second phase of the revolution when the British

moved from the north to the south.

Nathaniel Green became pretty famous for the delicacy with which he deals with the civilian population. the influence people, at least not to adhere to their cause.

They were very brusque.

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