During the early period of the American Revolution, the British and Colonial Armies were forced to adopt two different approaches to attempt victory because of variations in foreign affairs. Washington and his generals were inadequate on their own, and with their stretched supply lines, resorted to a defensive strategy. The British, with a massive supply system behind them, needed no foreign aid and desired to end the war quickly. The Battle of Saratoga turned around the international view on the American Revolution and consequently the tides of the war.
The Americans" lack of stable supplies and foreign support forced them to fight a defensive beginning of the war. From clothing to cannons to food, the colonies were wanting in supplies due to its past of submissive Mercantilism. Britain had disallowed factories in their colonies for more than a decade in fear of the competition such manufacturing institutions would create against themselves. The colonies provided the raw materials for British factories to create the finished products and spread throughout the world for their own profit. This lack of means by which to produce military supplies drove the American forces to raid British forces. Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold led colonial forces to Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point to outnumber the British there and capture their cannons, used later to force the British out of the port of Boston. In 1775, the colonists stood in Breed's Hill against the British troops quartered there to keep the colonists in line with the Intolerable Acts. Even with the elevated advantage and the arrogant British suffering enormous losses, the colonial army ran out of ammunition and was forced to flee the hills. This lack of supplies and frail dependence on fragile supply lines rendered the colonial military unable to stand offensively against the British. Consequently, they set forth to fight defensively, hoping to stall defeat long enough to receive foreign aid, fulfilled after the Battle of Saratoga.