List of wars involving the United States in the 18th century

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by editing the page to add missing items, with references to reliable sources.

This is a list of military conflicts, that United States has been involved in the 18th century.

This list is part of a larger series of list articles that cover the various wars involving the United States from its colonial roots to the present. They are:

• Lists of wars involving the United States
  • List of 17th-century wars involving the Thirteen Colonies
  • List of 18th-century wars involving the Thirteen Colonies
  • List of wars involving the United States in the 18th century
  • List of wars involving the United States in the 19th century
  • List of wars involving the United States in the 20th century
  • List of wars involving the United States in the 21st century

For the criteria of what may be permitted on this list, see Lists of wars involving the United States.

Key

US victory   Another result [Note 1]   US defeat

18th-century wars

Conflict	Allies	Opponent(s)	Result for the United States and its Allies	Leader of the United States
American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) Part of the American Revolution and the Atlantic Revolutions Location: North America, Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean and Europe Specific locations of American involvement: Atlantic Ocean, Bahamas, Caribbean Sea, British America, Irish Sea, North Sea and Spain The Battle of Long Island, August 27, 1776	Patriots:   Thirteen Colonies (1775) United Colonies (1775–1776) United States (from 1776) [Note 2] List New Hampshire Massachusetts Rhode Island Connecticut New York New Jersey Pennsylvania Delaware Maryland Virginia North Carolina South Carolina Georgia   France Spain   Dutch Republic Co-belligerents Br. Canadien, Cong. rgts. [Note 3] Br. Canadien mil., Fr. led [Note 4] Native Americans [4] Oneida Tuscarora Catawba Lenape Chickasaw Choctaw Mohican Mi'kmaq [Note 5] Abenaki Cheraw Pedee Lumbee [5]	Great Britain Loyalists Quebec Nova Scotia West Florida East Florida Co-belligerents Hesse [Note 6] Brunswick [Note 7] German mercenaries/auxiliaries [9] [Note 8] Hesse-Kassel Hesse-Hanau Waldeck Brunswick Ansbach Anhalt-Zerbst   Hanover Native Americans [4] Onondaga Mohawk Cayuga Seneca Mi'kmaq [Note 9] Cherokee Odawa Muscogee Susquehannock Shawnee	US-allied victory The American Revolution started as a civil war within the British Empire. [Note 10] It became a larger international war in 1778 once France joined. [Note 11] Signing of the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776. Great Britain would not recognize American independence until signing the 1783 Treaty of Paris. Great Britain cedes, generally, all mainland territories east of the Mississippi River, south of the Great Lakes, and north of the Floridas to the United States. Great Britain cedes Tobago and Senegal to France. Great Britain cedes Menorca, West Florida, and East Florida to Spain.	President of the Continental Congress: John Hancock Henry Laurens John Jay Samuel Huntington Thomas McKean John Hanson Elias Boudinot Thomas Mifflin Richard Henry Lee John Hancock Nathaniel Gorham Arthur St. Clair Cyrus Griffin
Cherokee–American wars (1776–1795) Part of the American Indian Wars Location: Old Southwest Abduction of Daniel Boone's daughter by the Cherokee	United States Choctaw	Cherokee Supported by: Spain (1783–1788)	US-allied victory	President of the Continental Congress: John Hancock Henry Laurens John Jay Samuel Huntington Thomas McKean John Hanson Elias Boudinot Thomas Mifflin Richard Henry Lee John Hancock Nathaniel Gorham Arthur St. Clair Cyrus Griffin President of the United States: George Washington (April 30, 1789 – March 4, 1797)
Moroccan seizure of the Betsey (1784) Location: Off the coast of Cádiz, Spain	United States	Morocco	Moroccan victory Merchant ship Betsey captured U.S. forced to pay $30,000 ransom Moroccan–American Treaty of Friendship signed, initiating the longest unbroken diplomatic relationship in U.S. history	President of the Continental Congress: Vacant (until November 30, 1784); Richard Henry Lee
Northwest Indian War (1785–1793) Part of the American Indian Wars Location: Northwest Territory The Battle of Fallen Timbers	United States Chickasaw Choctaw	Western Confederacy Council of Three Fires Iroquois Confederacy Seven Nations of Canada Wabash Confederacy (Wea, Piankashaw, and others) Illini Confederacy Wyandot Mississaugas Menominee Shawnee Lenape Miami Kickapoo Kaskaskia Chickamauga Cherokee (or "Lower Cherokee") Upper Muscogee Great Britain British North America	US-allied victory Treaty of Greenville (1795) American occupation of the Northwest Territory	President of the Continental Congress: John Hancock Nathaniel Gorham Arthur St. Clair Cyrus Griffin President of the United States: George Washington (April 30, 1789 – March 4, 1797)
American–Algerian War (1785–1795) Location: Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean Captain William Bainbridge paying tribute to the Dey of Algiers	United States	Regency of Algiers	Algerian victory The United States is unable to defend itself except with merchant marines. Establishment of the United States Navy through the Naval Act of 1794. The U.S. government agrees to pay an annual tribute of $21,600. [25] [26] $1 million tribute offered to the Dey.	President of the Continental Congress: John Hancock Nathaniel Gorham Arthur St. Clair Cyrus Griffin President of the United States: George Washington (April 30, 1789 – March 4, 1797)
Quasi-War (1798–1800) Location: Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean USS Constellation vs. L'Insurgente	United States Co-belligerent: Great Britain ('See: Invasion of Curaçao (1800))	French Republic Guadeloupe Spain (Neutral Defender) (See: Battle of Puerto Plata Harbor)	Inconclusive Convention of 1800 Peaceful cessation of Franco-American alliance End of French privateer attacks on American shipping American neutrality and renunciation of claims by France	President of the United States: John Adams (March 4, 1797 – March 4, 1801)

See also

• List of notable deployments of U.S. military forces overseas
• Timeline of United States military operations
• Military history of the United States
• United States Armed Forces
• List of American military installations
• List of United States drone bases
• Social history of soldiers and veterans in the United States
• Confederation of United States of America

Notes

1. for example a treaty or peace without a clear result, status quo ante bellum , result of civil or internal conflict, result unknown or indecisive, inconclusive
2. Including the United Colonies period from 1776 to 1781 and the Confederation period from 1781 to 1783.
3. Two independent "COR" Regiments, the Congress's Own Regiments, were recruited among British Canadiens. The 1st Canadian Regiment formed by James Livingston of Chambly, Quebec; ^[1] and the 2nd Canadian Regiment formed by Moses Hazen of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec. ^[2]
4. Augustin de La Balme independently marched on Detroit under a French flag with British Canadien militia recruited from western Quebec (Illinois County, Virginia) at the county seat of Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes. ^[3]
5. (until 1779)
6. Sixty-five percent of Britain's German auxiliaries employed in North America were from Hesse-Kassel (16,000) and Hesse-Hanau (2,422), flying this same flag. ^[6]
7. Twenty percent of Britain's German auxiliaries employed in North America were from Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (5,723), ^[7] flying this flag. ^[8]
8. The British hired over 30,000 professional soldiers from various German states who served in North America from 1775 to 1782. ^[10] Commentators and historians often refer to them as mercenaries or auxiliaries, terms that are sometimes used interchangeably. ^[9]
9. (from 1779)
10. Some historians name the 1861–1865 war the "Second American Civil War", because in their view, the American Revolutionary War can also be considered a civil war (since the term can be used in reference to any war in which one political body separates itself from another political body). They then refer to the Independence War, which resulted in the separation of the Thirteen Colonies from the British Empire, as the "First American Civil War". ^{[11] [12]} A significant number of American colonists stayed loyal to the British Crown and as Loyalists fought on the British side while opposite were a significant amount of colonists called Patriots who fought on the American side. In some localities, there was fierce fighting between Americans including gruesome instances of hanging, drawing, and quartering on both sides. ^{[13] [14] [15] [16]}
    • As early as 1789, David Ramsay, an American patriot historian, wrote in his History of the American Revolution that "Many circumstances concurred to make the American war particularly calamitous. It was originally a civil war in the estimation of both parties." ^[17] Framing the American Revolutionary War as a civil war is gaining increasing examination. ^{[18] [19] [20] [21]}
    • A group of merchants in Bristol wrote to King George III in 1775 voicing their "most anxious apprehensions for ourselves and Posterity that we behold the growing distractions in America threaten” and ask for their majesty’s “Wisdom and Goodness" to save them from "a lasting and ruinous Civil War". ^[22]
    • The "constrained voice" is a good^{[ according to whom? ]} synopsis of how the British viewed the American Revolutionary War, from anxiety to a foreboding sense of the conflict being a civil war. ^[22]
    • In the early stages of the rebellion by the American colonists, most of them still saw themselves as English subjects who were being denied their rights as such. James Otis reportedly said that "Taxation without representation is tyranny", in protest of the lack of colonial representation in Parliament. What made the American Revolution look most like a civil war, though, was the reality that about one-third of the colonists, known as loyalists (or Tories), continued to support and fought on the side of the crown. ^{[23] [ improper synthesis? ]}
11. • British Library: "The Revolution was both an international conflict, with Britain and France vying on land and sea, and a civil war among the colonists, causing over 60,000 loyalists to flee their homes." ^[24]
    • Encyclopædia Britannica : "Until early in 1778 the conflict was a civil war within the British Empire, but afterward it became an international war as France (in 1778) and Spain (in 1779) joined the colonies against Britain. Meanwhile, the Netherlands, which provided both official recognition of the United States and financial support for it, was engaged in its own war against Britain (see Anglo-Dutch Wars)." ^[23]

References

1. Smith 1907, p. 86
2. Everest 1977, p. 38
3. Seineke 1981, p. 36, fn
4. Bell 2015, Essay
5. Tortora, Daniel J. (February 4, 2015). "Indian Patriots from Eastern Massachusetts: Six Perspectives". Journal of the American Revolution. Archived from the original on February 2, 2023. Retrieved February 2, 2023.
6. Axelrod 2014, p. 66
7. Eelking 1893, p. 66
8. "Duchy of Brunswick until 1918 (Germany)". www.crwflags.com. Flags of the World . Retrieved 5 February 2024.
9. Atwood 2002, pp. 1, 23
10. Lowell 1884, pp. 14–15
11. Herschthal, Eric (September 6, 2016). "America's First Civil War: Alan Taylor's new history poses the revolution as a battle inside America as well as for its liberty". Slate. Archived from the original on June 26, 2017.
12. McAuley, James (August 4, 2011). "Ask an Academic: Talking About a Revolution". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on January 7, 2018.
13. Allen, Thomas (2011). Tories: Fighting for the King in America's First Civil War. New York: Harper.
14. Albert, Peter J., ed. (1985). An Uncivil War: The Southern Backcountry During the American Revolution. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
15. Young, Alfred, ed. (1976). The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism. DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press.
16. Armitage, David (2015). "Every Great Revolution Is a Civil War". In Baker, Keith Michael; Edelstein, Dan (eds.). Scripting Revolution: A Historical Approach to the Comparative Study of Revolutions (PDF). Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Archived (PDF) from the original on December 3, 2013. The renaming can happen relatively quickly: for example, the transatlantic conflict of the 1770s that many contemporaries saw as a British 'civil war' or even 'the American Civil War' was first called 'the American Revolution' in 1776 by the chief justice of South Carolina, William Henry Drayton.
17. Ramsay, David (1891) [written 1789]. "The History of the American Revolution". In Stedman, Edmund Clarence; Hutchinson, Ellen Mackay (eds.). A Library of American Literature: An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. Vol. IX–XI. Literature of the Republic. Archived from the original on July 27, 2018.
18. Wilson, Elise Stevens. Colonists Divided: A Revolution and a Civil War "Colonists Divided: A Revolution and a Civil War | the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History". History Resources. Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Archived from the original on October 17, 2016.{{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
19. Breen, Timothy H. (2011). "The American Revolution as Civil War". National Humanities Center. Archived from the original on June 24, 2017.
20. Lang, Seán (2017). "1776: American Revolution or British Civil War?". University of Cambridge. Archived from the original on July 27, 2018.
21. Cutterham, Tom (February 18, 2014). "Was the American Revolution a Civil War?". The Junto.
22. Greenwalt, Phillip S. (May 5, 2020). "British Perspective American Revolution". American Battlefield Trust.
23. Wallace, Willard M. (September 7, 2025). "American Revolution". Encyclopædia Britannica.
24. "The American Revolution". British Library. Archived from the original on 2020-11-05.
25. "Milestones: 1801–1829". Office of the Historian, State Department, United States.
26. Miller, David Hunter, ed. (1931). Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America. Vol. 2. U.S. Government Printing Office. pp. 275, 303.

External links

• Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research (HIIK)
  • Conflict Barometer – Describes recent trends in conflict development, escalations, and settlements
• A Continent Divided: The U.S.-Mexico War ^{[ permanent dead link ]}, Center for Greater Southwestern Studies, the University of Texas at Arlington
• Timeline of wars involving the United States, Histropedia
• U.S. Periods of War and Dates of Recent Conflicts, Congressional Research Service