he shots that rang out on April 19, 1775 in Lexington and Concord are widely considered to be the opening salvo in the US War for Independence. Although we may never know who shot first, there is another mystery that economics may help us unravel: why did the British Redcoats wear red coats?
Think about that mystery for a moment.
If wars are won by killing more of the enemy’s soldiers than they kill of yours, or getting them to surrender because death is certain, it doesn’t make sense to wear uniforms that are easy to spot. Being very visible on the battlefield seems counterintuitive. Red, particularly the bright shade favored by the Brits, is hard to miss. Today, modern armies invest in camouflage fabrics to blend into their field of operations and make it harder for the enemy to target. Were the British too dumb to realize this?
I pose this puzzle to students in my Introduction to Political Economy course, even though it appears unrelated to economic analysis. Oh, but it is. If economics is the study of cost-benefit analysis based upon (reasonably) rational calculation, why would an army want to make it easier for an enemy to see them? This is seemingly irrational.
A Bloody Explanation
When asking to solve this mystery, the first student response is predictable. “They wore red so that you couldn’t see the blood when a soldier got shot,” someone in the front row (the smart students) would confidently proclaim. Over the 35 times I’ve asked this question, this was the first answer given in all but one instance.
The answer is obvious, of course! Blood is red. The coats are red. If an infantryman gets shot or stabbed, he will never know it. And if he doesn’t know he’s injured, he’ll keep fighting and the enemy won’t know they’re winning. Ingenious!
C’mon, does that really make sense? Consider that the typical long rifle used during the late 18th century fired a lead bullet that was a half to three-quarters of an inch in diameter, and traveled at an average speed of 1,350 feet per second. Something like that is going to make an impact.
If you were hit anywhere by such a projectile, you wouldn’t need to look for blood. You would know instantaneously what happened. A sharp pain would occur, followed by lots of screaming (if death wasn’t immediate). Your comrades would figure out quickly that something was wrong without relying on visual blood evidence.
The “bloody” explanation fails to hold up on other grounds. Blood oozes out of wounds and will darken any color fabric lighter than black. Bright red clothing really doesn’t “hide the blood.” And then there is the major arterial spurting. Splatter, splatter everywhere, including on your hands and white breeches (which may well be stained with other fluids too).
Moreover, other armies didn’t choose red. The French favored blue. Hessians preferred blue or green earth tones, with some red flourishes. All very distinctive and fashionable for the times.
Thinking that red coats were used by Redcoats to hide blood stains is one of the dumbest explanations in the long history of dumb explanations.
