I'm no expert on this subject, but I once heard that the UK initially underestimated the rebels and sent a relatively weak force to recapture the colonies. They allegedly could have crushed the American Revolution if they wanted to but it didn't consider it worth the effort, as they didn't have any really important resources and there were other more pressing battles to be won at the time.
They initially sent a very weak force suitable only for riot control, because they weren't expecting the war to break out. Once it did they, if anything, were
overly concerned with recapturing the colonies in comparison to their actual importance to the empire and overestimated the damage their being severed from the empire would do, that's why the war dragged on for 8 years. At the time the war broke out Britain had been at peace, France wouldn't enter the war until 3 years later in 1778.
The British were supporting Indian tribes, who were themselves resisting American expansion. The British were mostly concerned with the security of Canada, and the fur trade with those tribes. Wikipedia is....ok, but it's better to read Wikipedia's own sources.
Btw the term 'reservations' isn't strictly correct, the Indian Reserve was not a reservation as it would be understood today, they only came about after the ARW and westward expansion.The treaties were trading treaties, the Indian Reserve was never a colony, perhaps arguably a protectorate.
This is untrue, there were reservations her tribes such as the Mohegans and Wampanoag explicitly referred to as such during the colonial era consisting of a small portion of land set aside for a tribe via treaty, entirely within an existing colony. In other words, identical to later reservations. But you're right, the major Indian Reserves, like the Ohio Territory, were not reservations in the sense they were in the US, they were instead great tracts of territory within which Indian tribes were essentially sovereign protectorates.
There was a Royal Proclamation against westward expansion, but it was rescinded to appease the settlers.
It wasn't ever rescinded, it was being run as originally planned, if not effectively. The Royal Proclamation only applied to private purchases of Native American land, (which were often fraudulent) it was never meant as an immoveable bar to future westward expansion.
In terms of industrialisation and militarisation, at the time (wrongly) this wasn't really a concern in Britain, the US was largely viewed as a rogue colony, not in the modern retrospective of a World superpower, which largely only came about in the nuclear age. You're right about their concerns over Canada, but it wasn't enough of a concern to deploy more than a token number of troops to keep an eye on things.
The US was considered a backwater and unimportant to the British compared to their continental concerns, but the independent United States had been considered a serious threat to the remaining British colonies in North America since before the Treaty of Paris was first signed. Not enough to keep a standing army around in Canada for (especially considering the lack of a US standing army) but nevertheless it was always a concern. Manufacturing and which nations were becoming industrial rivals was
definitely a concern to Britain, it was the backbone of their economy.