Thread by @KKriegeBlog

So I am a social historian, most of the wargamers and reenactors I talk like talking uniforms. 🧵
How impractical were 18th century uniforms? How can we take armies that wore bright colors, lace, and powdered wigs seriously? TL;DR, uniforms were often practical and adaptable.1/15

Uniforms are used as a piece of evidence to assert that eighteenth-century warfare was inefficient, formalized, and foppish. So, how ostentatious and formal was 18th-century military clothing? Did uniforms hamper the ability of European soldiers to effectively wage war? 2/15

It is said that the bright red uniforms of the British infantry made them easy targets, to be individually picked out by American riflemen. Although this may true in very specific cases, by and large, the American War of Independence was not fought by drab colored riflemen. 3/15

While the British were wearing their red, the American medley of colors in the early war was increasingly replaced by blue uniforms or white/grey hunting shirts after 1780. Very few of the American uniforms were intentionally designed to camouflage the individual wearer. 4/15

Why would this be the case? Fighting at 100-200 yards distance, bodies of infantry would produce huge palls of smoke making it very difficult to pick out individual targets once the fighting began. Muzzle flashes would identify large bodies of hostile troops in the smoke. 5/15

Thus, generals favored highly visible and identifiable uniforms because they allowed troops to be recognized. Units wore brightly colored coats, and different colored lapels and turnbacks allowed for officers and men to distinguish between different units of the same army. 6/15

Likewise, soldiers often carried pocket field guides to allow them to identify enemy units based upon their uniform details, much like the plane-silhouette playing cards of the 20th century. 7/15

Can we truly respect any army that fought in powdered wigs? Although hair powder was very popular, and worn by soldiers, by the middle of the eighteenth-century, soldiers preferred to wear their own hair, not wigs. Thomas Hughes of the 53rd Regiment recalled: 8/15

"The only disagreeable consequence attending his sickness is the loss of my hair, which comes out by hand-fulls. I hope it will not all fall out-- [an] old-fashioned figure shall I make in a wig. I shall be taken for the resurrection of one of Queen Anne's soldiers." 9/15

Writing in 1778, Hughes references the reign of Queen Anne from the 1710s. Eighteenth-century soldiers, then, also viewed wearing wigs as a relic of a bygone age. 10/15

Officers and soldiers often made common-sense decisions regarding clothing with regards to weather and terrain. Soldiers' buttoned their coats over while in cold or rainy weather, and regimental tailors were instructed to make sure this was possible. 11/15

The Russian and Swedish armies discarded their regimental coats in summer, fighting in sleeved waistcoats. Furthermore, during particularly hot summers, troops would remove yet more clothing. 12/15

The British Army adapted to local conditions in this way, cutting down hats and coats during the 1758 campaign in North America, and also merged local native legwear with the European gaiter. 13/15

Eighteenth-century clothing allowed troops to be identified in low-visibility conditions, they modified and wore their clothing differently in cold and hot weather, and adapted their clothing to local conditions. For footnotes, read it on the blog: shorturl.at/bCDFK 14/15

I'll do a thread later in the week on the practices I've developed for researching uniforms.