I never said that the Americans didn’t have the correctly sized force for their situation, I in fact pointed out that our numerically small armies were partially explained by weak neighbors. I was disputing the idea that we had a “large” army, which we for certain did not. You are correct in pointing out that “large” is not the same as “effective”, but that wasn’t the point I was making.
You are correct that European powers would have a very hard time projecting power over the Atlantic. If you had said that America was highly capable of defense because of its army and the high logistical cost of mounting an invasion across the Atlantic in pre-modern times, I would agree with you whole heartedly. France’s disastrous invasion of Haiti would also be a nice example to back this theory up too. But you said “large” and large in this context is an absolute without other qualifications (unlike say “effective”), which can be examined numerically.
What is large, exactly? If a large person was 1% smaller, would that person be still large? How doing this repeatedly and asking the same question each time?
In the context of North America in 1776, the American army was large. QED, have a good life.
I never said that the Americans didn’t have the correctly sized force for their situation, I in fact pointed out that our numerically small armies were partially explained by weak neighbors. I was disputing the idea that we had a “large” army, which we for certain did not. You are correct in pointing out that “large” is not the same as “effective”, but that wasn’t the point I was making.
You are correct that European powers would have a very hard time projecting power over the Atlantic. If you had said that America was highly capable of defense because of its army and the high logistical cost of mounting an invasion across the Atlantic in pre-modern times, I would agree with you whole heartedly. France’s disastrous invasion of Haiti would also be a nice example to back this theory up too. But you said “large” and large in this context is an absolute without other qualifications (unlike say “effective”), which can be examined numerically.