‘Yorktown’ is distinguished as one of two battles in the War of American Independence which sealed the fate of the British power in the rebellious colonies, the other being ‘Saratoga’ in 1777. In both cases a British military force was blockaded and eventually forced to surrender; in both cases the news of this result had widespread political repercussions in Europe: with Saratoga it helped to persuade the French government that the Americans were worth supporting openly and not just clandestinely; in the case of Yorktown the news helped to persuade the government in Britain and a majority of the British House of Commons that the fight in North America was not worth pursuing any more. The results of the two battles were thus diametrically opposed: Saratoga meant more war; Yorktown meant eventual peace.

The previous paragraph has begged all too many questions. To begin at the end: the battle of Yorktown was the prelude to two more full years of fighting; definitive peace did not arrive until November 1783, when the British at last evacuated New York. The actual decision for peace was less the result of a revulsion at the war, or despair at the defeat, but more to do with the war's cost and the wider imperial repercussions; political ambition had as much relevance to the outcome as any sympathy with the American rebels. Then there is the action itself: British historians tend to call it a ‘battle’; American and French accounts refer to it as a ‘siege’; but both terms are incomplete, if not inaccurate. There was a battle on land, one at sea, and a siege (on land), but the most important element was the extraordinary achievement of bringing the several forces, naval and military, French, American and British, all together at one point at the same time; maybe it would be best to think in terms of a campaign involving land and sea forces. But even that is inadequate. From the British viewpoint, the whole campaign which ended at Yorktown was only a relatively minor part of a war which, by 1781, involved fighting in Europe, America, Africa, and Asia, in which the fighting in North America was assuming steadily decreasing importance. It is a question to be considered: just how decisive was Yorktown in a war in which the fighting went on for so long after it?