Product Description

Change, sometimes gentle and subtle, more often shocking and violent - shattering ideals and shifting perspectives - is again the dynamic of this, the second volume of Schama's history of Britain. "The British wars began on the morning of July 23 1637, and the first missiles launched were stools. They flew down the nave of St. Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh and their targets were the Dean and Bishop of Edinburgh..." The first round of the British wars had been fired, and fired on grounds of faith. Over the next 200 years, other battles on other battlegrounds would be waged and would rage - both at home and abroad, on sea and on land, up and down the length of burgeoning Britain, and across three continents - Europe,America and India. Most of the British wars would be wars of faith - waged on wide-ranging grounds of political or religious conviction - between Republicans and Royalists, Catholics and Protestants, Tories and Whigs, colonialists and natives. Many of the British battles would be fought on battlefields far from Britain, as far afield as Quebec and Calcutta. Yet the wars of the British remain essentially British wars - fought by the British, for the British and between the British. But who exactly were the British and what were they fighting for ? The answers unravel as the the story of "The Wars of the British" unfolds. It is a story of revolution and reaction, of inspiration and disillusion, of progress and catastrophe, of huge gains and massive losses, of battles fought against the odds, as when Robert Clive stood at Plassey, or James Wolfe fell at Quebec.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15212 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The second volume of Simon Schama's BBC History of Britain: The British Wars, 1603-1776 is a more serious affair than the first. A History of Britain Vol I was free-range history: a fresh and at times iconoclastic survey of more than 1,500 years of the nation's story. Now Schama is more penned in, covering just a century and a half in 500 pages, and mixing it with the cockiest and wisest historians in the farmyard.

The ingredients that made the first volume such a spectacular success are still there: highly visual prose, fine informative illustrations, insightful thumbnail sketches of all the leading players and above all a clever interplay between what happened and, often of more significance, what people thought had happened. But this time around Schama also has to weave his way through the complex narrative of the civil war and Protectorate, restoration, "glorious" revolution and establishment of empire. He does so with clarity and wit, but also with admirable sympathy for all the conflicting protagonists--the austere Stuarts, the reluctant hero Cromwell, the cunning Walpole, the gouty Pitt and the thousands of Scots, Irish and American, and the millions of Africans and Indians whose destinies shaped and were shaped by the forging of the British state in these years.

Predictably, some history gets left out. Apart from a colourful depiction of Hogarthian London, social and economic history get short shrift, leading Schama, for instance, to imply that the British push to empire was largely the result of a popular addiction to narcotics: tea, coffee and opium. However, Schama's larger story--how a nation that was created out of a titanic struggle for liberty then went on to impose dubious dominion on much of the rest of the world--is told in a masterly and compelling manner. --Miles Taylor

Review
While not achieving quite the impact that previous programmes in a similar vein have done, Schama's history has nevertheless distinguished itself as a major television event. But is the book its natural home, or the TV screen? Needless to say, an author as accomplished as Schama has rendered the book quite as impressive as its TV equivalent, and this remarkable history veers between subtle and deeply penetrating insights set against shocking and violent panoramas. At the heart of this history are questions of great importance for Britain's future as well as its past. What makes or breaks a nation? To whom do we give our allegiance and why? And where do the boundaries of our community lie? All these questions are treated in the epic narrative that Schama unfolds, and all the great figures of British history are here: from Oliver Cromwell to Bonnie Prince Charlie, and from Christopher Wren to Guy Fawkes. The illustrations are, of course, nonpareil.

The Spectator
Simon Schama is a historian of remarkable gifts and achievements.

Customer Reviews

A real page-turner
I read this close upon having finished (devoured rather) volume 1, and this is as good if not better. Predictably, it's not exhaustive or extremely detailed but precisely therefore it offered what I was looking for: an easily readable, engaging (Schama is a master storyteller) overview of British history.

It's so good that afterwards I couldn't wait to get my hands on volume 3, AND buy a host of more in-depth books on particular periods or events, and surely that is the best than any history book can hope to achieve?

Still compelling
For me, this second volume of Schama History of Britain was the weakest of the 3, but still manages to come off as a wonderful narrative of the English Civil War and the dawn of the Empire. It's hard to criticise a work of such genius. Parts 1 and 3 kept more of a shared tone - fast moving, blockbuster reads - whilst this middle section slows things down for a long hard look at admittedly many of the crucial moments in our history. Still great, but a bit more of that ole Henry VIIIth scandal would have been great. I guess you can't change the story though...

Schama at his best. Compelling, superb, lucid and readable.
This is by far the best of the three volumes of Schama's History of Britain. Volume 1 needs more space to tell all the stories Schama wants to discuss; Volume 3 loses a little coherence because of its thematic rather than purely narrative approach. Volume 2 is the jewel in the crown though - an account of the 160-odd years from the start of King Charles I's reign through to the start of the American Revolution - the years that saw England transform into Britain, and from a marginal state at the edge of Europe into one of the Great Powers.

The themes of the book are nationalism, power, trade, and the complex relationship between government, monarchy and the people - Schama is a master at juxtaposing the stories of all three, showing the chains of chance, cause and influence that shape history. He quotes original sources liberally, writes in a wonderfully fluid and unaffected style, and has chosen a sensible set of illustrations to accompany the text.

Since Schama covers 150 years in the sort of space he'd previously used to cover the previous 4500 years, there is plenty of room for background, for personality and character (both the author's and those of the protagonists) to be revealed, and for analysis of the what-if's and might-have-beens.

This is narrative history at its best - a book as powerful as Schama's "Citizens" which singlehandedly rekindled my interest in European history.

Absolutely superb - a master at the peak of his talent.