Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #357563 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-25
• Binding: Hardcover
• 422 pages

Synopsis
Although 1759 is not a date as well known in British history as 1215, 1588, or 1688, there is a strong case to be made that it is the most significant year since 1066. In the two great battles of 1759, Britain effectively beat France for global supremacy and founded the first British Empire. From the almost uninterrupted series of victories that year came momentous consequences. Victory in the East, in India and the Philippines, which in turn led to the colonisation of Australia and New Zealand. Victory in North America secured Canada for the empire and, by removing the French, created the conditions which inspired American rebellion. Until now, the story of the causes and consequences of The Seven Years War (1756-63) has been largely obscured. As Thackeray famously remarked in Barry Lindon, it would take a theologian, rather than an historian, to unravel the true causes. Drawing on a mass of primary materials - from texts in the Vatican archives to oral histories of the North American Indians - Frank McLynn shows how the conflict between Britain and France triggered the first 'world war', raging from Europe to Africa; the Caribbean to the Pacific; the plains of the Ganges to the Great Lakes of North America, and also brought about the War of Independence, the acquisition by Britain of the Falkland Islands and ultimately, The French Revolution.

About the Author
Frank McLynn is currently Visiting Professor in the Department of Literature at Strathclyde University. A full-time writer, his most recent books include Napoleon, 1066, Villa and Zapata, and Wagons West all published by Cape/Pimlico.

Customer Reviews

Focus on this historical turning point, gentle reader
This book isn't perfect, but I found the character sketches alone worth the admission price.

My knowledge of this part of history is not substantial; nevertheless McLynn manages to give the reader a sufficiency of human goings-on around this pivotal year, which only helps to give weight to the costs and benefits of the achievements and losses. Some more maps would be a better investment than the monochrome plates that are reproduced, to no advantage (McLynn even debunks some of them in the text!).

The battle between the two colossi, the nascent British Empire and ancien régime, still speaks to the reader over the centuries. Ultimately, McLynn concludes, the paradoxical indecisive absolute monarch causes the French to implode. Little is said of the Bourbon King, however, and what makes the next page more interesting than the last is tracking the structural fissures that streak through the edifice of bureaucracy, ultimately manifesting in the greed and morally expedient functionaries with little to fear from the crumbling system.

The style give hint to the quantity of research, without extracting specifics where none can reasonably be drawn, for example, page 39:
"The grandiloquently styled Intendant of New France, responsible for finance and trade and -- in an evil hour -- also given responsibility for supplying the armed forces, Bigot was an embezzler and larcenist on the grand scale, who had erected a pyramid of corruption and defalcation in which major scams ran in tandem with a casual network of backhanders, sweeteners, kickbacks and payola, extending all the way down to the simple butcher and greengrocer. Vaudreuil knew all about Bigot's corruption and venality, but did nothing about it. Historians are undecided about the reason: perhaps Bigot had established a psychological ascendancy over Vaudreuil so that the Governor-General was afraid of him; maybe, having clashed bitterly with his Finance Minister when in Louisiana and having suffered for it in his career, Vaudreuil was determined not to make the same mistake again; or it could be that Vaudreuil was simply being paid to keep his mouth shut and covered his tracks well. Montcalm was to suffer hugely from the looming influence of the Intendant: this was a hidden and underrated factor in France's eventual loss of Canada."

On pages 92-3 McLynn demonstrates the stark difference in global realities between now and then: "The West Indies were widely seen as a prize supremely worth fighting for, since sugar was the biggest business of eighteenth-century colonial empires. In 1775 sugar made up one-fifth of all British imports and was worth five times Britain's tobacco imports. What this meant was that to British ministerial minds, the West Indies was a more important area than North America and Britain's great leader in 1759, William Pitt[,] explicitly stated that he thought the French sugar island of Guadeloupe was worth more than the whole of Canada and that the West Indies were worth more than North America: 'The state of existing trade in conquests of North America is extremely low; the speculations of their future are precarious, and the prospect, at the very best, very remote.' He had a point, even though a limited and unimaginative one -- since even at the time of the Boston Tea Party in 1773 the value of British imports from Jamaica was five times greater than from all of the American colonies."

The book is detailed (some might argue to a fault), and it gives a window on the world of (geo-)politics (from Pompadour to Pitt, the Wild Geese to the Compagnie des Indes Orientales, from Jacobites to Freemasons), warfare (muskets rifles and cannonade), religion (the French Jansenist heresy that her secular courts could rule over clergy; the fall of the Jesuits), and even a smattering of philosophy; perhaps the most vivid imagery comes from the lives of the ordinary people and their fates.

I recommend this book.

Thoroughly enjoyable
First class read, packed full of history written in a style I personally found most agreeable.

I particularly like the way each chapter opened with a note referencing key events and happenings which also occured in this important year.

In my opinion a must for any reader interested in British history.

Not quite the year of victories, but a good read nonetheless
It's a good bit of narrative history by the author, well researched and well written. Perhaps the only reason it doesn't quite do what it says on the tin is that the central idea come across as a little contrived. 1066 by comparison was a significant year that completely changed England for ever. 1759 was a significant year, but not as strikingly so, and ultimately events like the American Wars of Independence undid the victory a few years later. It would be like saying 1940 was a year of victory for Germany, ignoring the fact that they ultimately lost the cause five years later.

Still worth a read though. I didn't put it down until it was read to the end.