Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754 - 1766

by Fred Anderson

In this vivid and compelling narrative, the Seven Years' War–long seen as a mere backdrop to the American Revolution–takes on a whole new significance. Relating the history of the war as it developed, Anderson shows how the complex array of forces brought into conflict helped both to create Britain’s empire and to sow the seeds of its eventual dissolution.

Beginning with a skirmish in the Pennsylvania backcountry involving an inexperienced George Washington, the Iroquois chief Tanaghrisson, and the ill-fated French emissary Jumonville, Anderson reveals a chain of events that would lead to world conflagration. Weaving together the military, economic, and political motives of the participants with unforgettable portraits of Washington, William Pitt, Montcalm, and many others, Anderson brings a fresh perspective to one of America’s most important wars, demonstrating how the forces unleashed there would irrevocably change the politics of empire in North America.

Genres: History, American History, Nonfiction, War, Military History, Military Fiction, American Revolution

912 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2000

About the author

Fred Anderson is an American historian specializing in early North American history, particularly the colonial and revolutionary periods. He earned his B.A. from Colorado State University and his Ph.D. from Harvard, later teaching at both institutions. Now Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado Boulder, he has held fellowships from the NEH, Guggenheim Foundation, and others. His acclaimed book Crucible of War received the Francis Parkman and Mark Lynton History Prizes. He co-authored The Dominion of War with Andrew Cayton and wrote The War That Made America, companion to the PBS series. Anderson is also a contributor to the Oxford History of the United States.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

“It had been a lopsided skirmish. Around the rim of the hollow three of [George] Washington’s troops were wounded, and one lay dead; at its bottom the French had suffered fourteen casualties. One of the wounded, a thirty-five-year-old ensign named Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville, identified himself as the detachment’s commander. Through a translator, he tried to make it known that he had come in peace, as an emissary with a message summoning the English to withdraw from the possessions of…Louis XV. The letter he carried would make everything clear…As [Washington] withdrew [to read the letter], Tanaghrisson stepped up to where Jumonville lay. ‘Tu n’es pas encore mort, mon père’, he said; Thou art not yet dead, my father. He raised his hatchet and sank it into the ensign’s head, striking until he had shattered the cranium. Then he reached into the skull, pulled out a handful of viscous tissue, and washed his hands in Jumonville’s brain…”
- Fred Anderson, Crucible of War

Fred Anderson’s Crucible of War is two things at once. First, it is the best book available on the Seven Years’ War, which pitted the empires of Great Britain and France (not to mention Spain, Prussia, Austria, and more) in a battle royale that spanned two oceans and three continents, and which killed hundreds of thousands of people. Second, it is one of the more important books to read if you want to learn why – in 1775 – the American colonies lurched into open revolt.

At nearly 750 pages of text, this is an ambitious doorstopper, but Anderson earns every page. The Seven Years’ War (known in North America as the French and Indian War) was truly a world war. It began in “Jumonville’s Glen,” in present-day Pennsylvania, when a young George Washington, goaded by a wily Seneca known as the Half-King, fired on a small party of Frenchmen in the woods, bearing diplomatic dispatches. From there it flared across the frontier, into Canada, and across the seas into Europe itself. When it ended is an open question. The symbolic denouement came in 1759, with the British capture of Quebec. The technical end came in 1763, with the Treaty of Paris. But as Anderson demonstrates, the war kept on echoing, up to and beyond the moment when shots were fired on the Lexington common.

Anderson divides his epic into ten parts, with each part further subdivided into multiple chapters. In terms of a timeline, we begin in 1740 and end with an epilogue at Mount Vernon in 1767. While Crucible of War is dense and an academic grade above your typical popular history, Anderson does a lot of things to make this more accessible. For one, there is the structure itself, with a table of contents that serves as an outline to keep you from getting lost. Moreover, before each new part begins, Anderson provides the dates covered and a summary of what is to come. It’s a small thing but I found it immensely useful, especially when I needed to go back and check something. Helping matters is Anderson’s smooth literary style, which combines a keen marshaling of facts with pertinent primary-source quotations and an understated wit.

Crucible of War attempts to wrap its arms around a whole bunch of disciplines at once, integrating them into a cohesive whole. Thus, we get coverage of military history, economics, politics, and culture. Roughly the first third of Crucible of War feels like a typical French and Indian War book. Anderson skillfully narrates the various battles, including the early French victories at Fort Oswego, Fort William Henry (for all you The Last of the Mohicans fans out there), and Fort Carillon. He also cuts away to show you the broader view, as William Pitt used proxies such as Frederick the Great to hold the line in Europe, while hitting France at the more vulnerable fringes of her empire.

(One of the major causes of England’s victory, Anderson states, is French indifference to holding Canada, which was a money-losing proposition. It seems true, as Voltaire sneered, that Canada simply represented “a few acres of snow” to King Louis XV).

Easily the biggest surprise here (if you don’t look at the table of contents), is that Anderson gets to the dramatic Battle of Quebec – where James Wolfe met the Marquis de Montcalm on Abe Martin’s field – by page 344. In Anderson’s presentation, this battle, which is typically shown as the symbolic or emotional end of the Seven Years’ War, did not decide anything. If there is a decisive battle, Anderson posits, it occurred off the coast of France, where the Royal Navy defeated the French Navy at Quiberon Bay.

Once the battles on the North American continent end (and most books on the Seven Years’ War in America end, as well), Anderson really bears down. He gets into the Cherokee uprising, Pontiac’s Rebellion, English parliamentary politics, and – of course – the taxation (without representation!). There is a chapter on the Sugar Tax, the Currency Act, and the infamous Stamp Act.

I know this is a hard sell – it being only slightly more fun to learn about taxes than to pay them – but Anderson makes this stuff really interesting. He provides nuance to the seeds of the American Revolution, explaining why Great Britain felt the need to levy taxes, and why American colonists felt the need to riot and burn effigies in protest. There are discussions on Britain’s occupation costs, Pitt’s wartime subsidies, and the proper value to be placed on provincial participation in the defeat of the French. Anderson shows how the authoritarian, coercive measures taken by the British clashed with a colonial culture that valued contractual relationships. But he also allows that Great Britain had a point in expecting that America would bear its share of the burden for a war fought on their behalf. To this end, Anderson’s evocation of George Grenville, who dreamt up the Stamp Act, is among the book’s highlights.

The latter stages of Crucible of War require concentration, to be sure. Once past Quiberon Bay, Anderson tilts the focus away from military encounters in favor of political wrangling (meaning that the Cherokee uprising and Pontiac’s War are described in far less detail than Anderson gave to Braddock’s defeat along the Monongahela). Yet, I found the minutiae of British imperial strategy to be utterly fascinating. Despite ending well before the actual outbreak of revolution, Anderson convinced me that the Seven Years’ War was “the necessary precondition for the development of an American nation-state.”

You cannot understand the outbreak of World War II in 1939 without going back to the years 1914-1919. Similarly, you cannot understand the American Revolution without first heading back to 1754, and studying the war that began in a heretofore unnamed glen.

Too often, America’s world-altering revolution is abridged to a handful of buzzwords. A tangled, knotty event gets reduced to a simple binary pitting freedom-loving tea-partiers against haughty and bewigged tyrants. Crucible of War shows it to be something far more complex. There is some villainy, to be sure, as well as arrogance and deliberate heavy-handedness. Mostly, though, as with all big historical moments, this is a tale of human limitations, with bad decisions made by smart men, with strategic miscalculations, and with an inability to see all ends at once. It is the story of how an empire was both won and lost in the same war.

[Breck Baumann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Famed professor and historian Fred Anderson uses his brilliance and expertise on early American history to recreate and scrutinize the Seven Years’ War in North America, and in turn explain it’s everlasting effects on both a domestic and international scale. Anderson argues right from the opening that it was actually the French and Indian War—and not the Revolutionary War—that set off the Americans as a people and power to behold and approach with due caution and respect. With high regard for all parties at play, Anderson begins his epic with the disarray of negotiations and treaties broken between the Six Nations Iroquois, the French, and British colonists.

While it’s apparent from the first few chapters that this is indeed a scholarly work, Anderson delights in captivating the reader with the intensity and nail-biting prose that would not be found in a textbook or work of this magnitude. He describes in detail the creation of the Ohio Company and their early dealings and exploits in the Ohio territory, giving full accounts of different individuals’ experiences and testimonies as well as their active parts in the battles of Jumonville Glen, and the Monongahela. What’s highly convenient and unique to Anderson’s style is the fact that he concisely summarizes each of the next few chapters upon reaching each distinct part of the book—to which it is split into ten appropriate sections. This is extremely useful to the reader as there is a treasure trove of fact and detail crammed into the pages, and it is easy to reference where or when a certain battle took place, or whom came into power or leadership upon the outcome of a campaign or treaty.

As Anderson moves through each year describing each and every battle and siege including the likes of Oswego, Crown Point, and Ticonderoga, it’s quite astonishing how he never bores his audience with overextended analysis on such matters as troop protocol or strength—but instead focuses on the highlights, ramifications, and overall reactions on both sides of the Atlantic to these victories or defeats. With the surrender of the British fleet in the Battle of Minorca after Admiral Byng’s disastrous decision to resupply and repair at Gibraltar—a mark that would lead to his court-martial and controversial death warrant—acting Prime Minister Newcastle is disgraced for his neglect and failures. Anderson with his usual grace explains that his replacement, William Pitt, would enter the playing field with no love or respect from George II, in which the elderly king would keep him on a tight leash and careful watch due to his political and hereditary leanings. Indeed, Pitt’s government is put to an end after only a few months when his request for Byng’s clemency is denied, which Anderson ably provides much attention to this intermission until finally the famous dual-ministership of Newcastle and Pitt comes to power.

Following Montcalm’s victory at Fort William Henry, Anderson alarmingly depicts the horrific massacre that proceeded after the French had called for a cessation of all hostilities, in which their Native allies set upon the British inhabitants and prisoners within the Fort the following morning—scalping and maiming their victims in unimaginable and grotesque brutality. Anderson also notes the inadequacy of James Abercromby’s leadership as commander-in-chief of British forces in North America, bringing forth the behind the scenes letters and criticisms of John Bradstreet and Charles Lee, and showing a substantial difference in determination and tactics when comparing Jeffrey Amherst’s later success. With a range of victories that would allow the British to advance in 1759, Anderson additionally notes that those higher in the chain of command and in stature—especially the newly appointed commander-in-chief, Amherst—were all too aware of the thin rope that held the American militiamen from considering themselves loyal and bonded British subjects. Indeed, it was quite clear that these apparent fortunate times would not sway these fickle countrymen from their independent lifestyles and leanings.

Interestingly, Anderson credits the naval Battle of Quiberon Bay as the defining victory for the British in 1759, and not the often-quoted and memorable Battle for Québec. He insists that James Wolfe’s ill health and overall awareness of the political consequences of a British failure on his end led to his death-defying determination and decision to scale the Plains of Abraham—a plan that he would see through at all costs. With the eventual acknowledged yet rather hesitant capitulation of French forces in Canada, the war continued on in the interior between the Native Americans and provincials—both of whom Amherst despised, yet he had a duty to protect His Majesty’s colonists and their best interests. Anderson points out that his overall method of dealing with the Natives only exacerbated the underlying tensions that were already unfolding, due to his lack of empathy and ignorance of their culture and livelihood—a fault that could have saved much of the bloodshed and wartime expenditures that followed in Pontiac’s War:

Amherst, not yet knowing that Ecuyer had already put the theory into practice, replied that when Bouquet reached the valley he should try to spread disease among the Indians by passing smallpox-infected blankets among them. “We must,” he wrote, “Use Every Stratagem in our Power to Reduce them.” To Gladwin and other officers he issued orders that all Indians taken prisoner should “immediately be put to death, their extirpation being the only security for our future safety, and their late treacherous proceedings deserving no better treatment at our hands.”

The only criticism to be found in Anderson’s masterpiece is the fact that he strays a bit from the Seven Years’ War after it’s completion, and pivots to Great Britain’s policy of taxing and imposing upon their colonial subjects in America. This is a topic that has been repeated and well-established in numerous histories of this period, and it feels as if this unnecessary filler content just takes away from the overall pleasurable reading experience—in what feels like an already monumental undertaking when considering the length of his work. Perhaps Anderson could have split the book into two volumes, with the second pertaining to the years following the British victory and Treaty of Paris from 1763 onward. Indeed, it is all too evident that the final chapters could have been concisely summarized into a powerful conclusion and epilogue—leaving the reader with a fondness and new respect for the history of the French and Indian War.

Overall, the enormous attention paid to each major and minor character portrayed must have been quite an undertaking, and his research on their lives and contributions has provided a wealth of knowledge to an already substantial history of the Seven Years’ War. This includes the rivalry of such international figures as Frederick II of Prussia and Catherine the Great, as well as the political feuds and overtures involving the likes of John Wilkes, George Grenville, Cadwallader Colden, George Croghan, the Earl of Bute, James Otis Jr., and the Duke of Cumberland—just to name but a few. Unquestionably the definitive academic study of the French and Indian War in North America, Anderson’s work includes countless maps complete with plans of forts and battles, over fifty illustrations, yet surprisingly no index for such an elaborate tome.

[Theo Logos · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Seven Years War was the most important war of the 18th century. Americans (who call it The French and Indian War) tend to view it simply as a sort of prequel to the American Revolution, but it was so much more. Anderson writes:

”Unlike every prior 18th century European conflict The Seven Years War ended in the decisive defeat of one belligerent and a dramatic rearrangement of the balance of power, in Europe and North America alike."

The result crushed French power and dreams of empire in North America, while giving Britain her first great empire. It also profoundly altered the destiny of the American Indians and colonist.

The Seven Years War was the first truly global war, fought not just in North America and Europe, but in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. Yet this first great global war started in the backwoods of North America, sparked by the blundering of a green, 22 year old Virginia Militia officer named George Washington. Anderson maintains that North America was both the most important theater and the greatest prize of that war. His focus, therefore, is concentrated on British North America. He not only emphasizes the role that the colonist played in the conflict (something often overlooked), but counts the Indians as a full player in the game of empire - struggling to maintain their way of life, and not just a sort of savage auxiliary force for the Europeans.

Anderson does not end his history with the official end of the war. He goes on to write of Pontiac's Uprising, and the effects that Britain's victory had on the Indians. Likewise, he writes of the Stamp Act and the other acts passed by Parliament in an attempt to pay the huge debt the war had caused - actions that began to destroy their newly gained empire from its infancy. He never loses sight of the fact that the history of a war is far more than a detailing of battles.

While Anderson writes vividly of battles, Crucible of War is not a book concentrated on military campaigns, and if you are narrowly interested in campaign histories, this isn’t the book for you. Nor does he effectively cover the French perspective of the war. What he does most effectively is give the big picture of the war and its meaning for Britain, her North American colonist, and the American Indians. Both those who are coming to this material for the first time and those who already have a firm knowledge of the period can benefit from reading this superb book. It is a masterful, single volume treatment of this consequential conflict.

[Jeremy Perron · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I explained in my last few posts, a short while ago, I decided to do a straight reading up on the history of my country. Not by a series of biographies or of any particular event; but a simple march through the ages exploring all the eras of the United States of America. The biggest challenge is to find books that try their best to explore from multiple perspectives in order to avoid just one narrow view, without at the same time surrendering a general narrative that is both readable and enjoyable. After finishing Jill Lepore's book on King Phillip's War, I decided to move on to Fred Anderson's book covering what we in America call the French and Indian War. The book looks at the major actors in the British and French Empires, and the Iroquois Confederacy and how this conflict changed them from top to bottom.

Like many wars, especially European Wars in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the conflict covered in this work is known by two names. Anglo-American colonials tended to name their wars after their kings and queens. The colonists had named the War of Austrian Succession,'King George's War', and created a problem because King George II was still on the throne. They needed a new name for the conflict that Europe would call the Seven-Years' War. The name the Anglo-American colonists came up with was: 'the French and Indian War'.

Fred Anderson's reason for producing this book is that the place we historians assign the French and Indian War in the historical narrative, he argues, is as the simple prologue of the American Revolutionary War. With this book, Anderson brings the America's most forgotten and--arguably--most important war, to the forefront to be study on its own terms and not as the inevitable beginning of a different conflict. Prior to this war, the two great colonial powers in North America were the British and French Empires. These empires were populated by colonists who were strongly identified with their imperial connections and a powerful Native American Nation in the Iroquois Confederacy that was able to provide a buffer and power broker between the two powers. After this conflict the French would be vanquished and the British would be left with an empire that was most ungovernable and the Iroquois would be set on the beginning of their fall from power.

When I was in college, I, who had always been a history buff, felt I had strong understanding of World War II. Then in my Western Civilization II class with Parker Albee, we spent some time going over World War I. I remember thinking--as if a light had gone off in my head--'I understand why World War II happened better now.' Prior, all I had known of World War I had been some of its aftermath that helped lead to World War II, but nothing in real strong detail. I now view World War I and World War II almost as the different chapters in the same historic event. Having read this book I feel the same way about my understanding of the French and Indian War and the American Revolutionary War, as I did with my earlier reevaluations on World War I and World War II. I realize that this may sound the opposite of Anderson's intentions; however, I want to stress that reading this book you understand the French and Indian War as its own event but it still increases your understanding of the American Revolution.

One of the biggest things that stood out in my mind while reading this book was how some of the politics that led to the American Revolution against Britain during the late 1760s and 1770s were foreshadowed by the early events of the French and Indian War. The Earl of Loudoun, who was the commander in chief of the British armies in America, made several attempts to command the colonial governors and legislatures as if they were his colonels. His actions and the massive attempts to resist them by the colonial Anglo-Americans strongly resembled what was to come a decade later. Fortunately for the British cause in this war, William Pitt, who was a strong believer in the colonial subjects British rights, relived Loudoun of his command and set the colonial relations to rights.

"By mid-December 1757, Pitt knew that if the American assemblies were to be transformed from centers of resistance into sources of men and money, he would have to reverse entirely the course of colonial policy. Instead of treating the colonies like subordinate jurisdictions and requiring them to finance the war effort by forced contributions to a common fund, Pitt resolved to treat them like allies, offering subsidies to encourage their assemblies to aid in the conquest of New France. Rather than continuing to demand that civil authority, in the persons of colonial governors and legislatures, submit to military power in the person of His Majesty's commander in chief, Pitt resolved to withhold from Loudoun's successor direct authority over the provinces. In the future, as always in the past, the governors would receive their instructions directly from the secretary of state for the Southern Department. By this new grant (or more properly, restoration) of autonomy to the provinces, by offering inducements to cooperation rather than by seeking to compel union among them, Pitt hoped to create a patriotic enthusiasm that had not been much in evidence since 1756."p.214

In this book Anderson masterfully moves his readers from one military theater on the frontiers North America to another on continental Europe, he also cross-cuts from one political scene to another. While reading this book, the reader will go from the court of King George II to the assemblies of the American colonies, to military headquarters of Fredrick the Great, to the Massachusetts colonial militia. Yet it never becomes confusing making the reader feel out of place, Anderson's narrative flows smoothly from one event and theater to another without missing a beat.

I highly recommend this work to anyone it is really exceptional book. Fred Anderson takes a highly difficult and at times confusing subject and lays it out rather neatly making it easy for his readers to understand this war that had so much impact on the modern world.

[Brett C · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a deep-dive, top-notch level account of Colonial American history and the Seven Year's War. This was the complete unabridged version as there is a condensed version available as well. Fred Anderson delivered simultaneously broad stroke information on cultural & historical aspects while zeroing-in specifics on battles, logistics, and military outcomes. He gave this from Native American, colonial, British, & French vantage points to drive the point home.

Other than an academic level-type of course, this book probably all you need to learning this information. The readability was great: clear and deliverable. I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in early Colonial American history and military history. Thanks!

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is not very often you come across a history book that can be considered the authoritative account of a period. Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 is one of the rare books to achieve this status, you will come to understand the “French and Indian War” or the “Seven Years War” in a new light. A through account of the “World” War that featured the North American conflict, the European conflict, the British efforts in India, the fight for the Caribbean, and always an exciting story. A good companion to this book would be “Frederick the Great: The Magnificent Enigma (or any good history of the Seven Years’ War in Europe) and a book about William Pitt’s stint as Prime Minister (I don’t have a recommendation here yet). Who should read Crucible and why?

The Americans: because you will see that, without the French and Indian War, we probably would not have rebelled and declared independence from Great Britain. You will be disabused of the myth that George Washington started the conflict with his bumbling command at Fort Necessity and the death of Jumonville. War was inevitable. You will see the origin of many of our tenets and Constitutional Amendments in actions taken during this period, although it may be painful to consider that the prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure might have been generated by the desire of smugglers to avoid UK customs officials? I could read about the events that lead to the fight against taxation without representation; housing of soldiers, right to bear arms, etc. You will meet the future leaders of independence. Some inspire, some don’t. The Native Americans in this story are key players and fascinating. At the end of the war, the Americans and the British are united in victory over France. Learn how the seeds of rebellion were sown and will germinate a short decade later.

The British: Great Britain and France were itching for a war. Great Britain wanted an empire in North America and it did not include “New France” as a neighbor. Britain wanted France out of North America. See how Britain stumbles in the early days, tries to fight a war European Style and exacerbates a major culture clash between the colonists and the Brits. Eventually the Brits figure things out with Pitt at the head and treat the Americans as equals, asking for rather than demanding support and funds. Better war-fighting tactics and strategy overcome early French advantages. But after victory, British leaders revert to form and impose taxes and control over the colonies, sowing seeds of unrest.

The Canadians: Much of the action takes place in the future Canadian territories. The siege and aftermath of Loiusburg, the fate of the Acadians, the capture of Quebec and Montreal, the French and Indian alliances and how they fell apart, probably many areas where current practices originated.

The French: At the beginning of the war, France held a great advantage. The French methods in gaining and maintaining their Indian allies should have kept the English from penetrating much beyond the coastal areas. Montcalm threw away great advantages by not understanding his potential Indian partners. Quebec should not have been lost. But the British navy was always going to influence the outcome in North America in a major way. Not much the French navy could do.

Native Americans: The Iroquois Confederacy and the Five Nations held great power but this was lost gradually. Interesting characters and decisions are covered in detail here.

Caribbean islanders: The war will eventually have an impact here.

Some excerpts:

Britain and France are rivals heading for war:

In fact, events had reached a stage at the beginning of 1755 that made war between Britain and France all but inevitable. The origins of that war lay in a skein of developments so tangled that neither Newcastle nor any other diplomatist in Europe could fully have unraveled, let alone controlled, them. The decay of the Iroquois Confederacy’s neutrality policy and the rising independence of the Indians of the upper Ohio Valley; the surge of Anglo-American traders and land speculators into the region; the fears of the French for the loss of contact by way of the Ohio between New France and the Illinois Country; the anxiety of British ministers at the growth of French influence both in the interior of America and on the European Continent; the personalities of Dinwiddie, Duquesne, Newcastle, Cumberland, and even such obscure figures as Washington, Croghan, and Tanaghrisson: in the interaction of all these lay the beginnings of a conflagration that in fact already smoldered on the eastern fringe of the Ohio Valley. The realignment of the European alliance system, the posting of British and French troops to America, and the dominance of aggressive British politicians would take such comparatively minor episodes as Jumonville’s death and the Battle of Fort Necessity and make of them something much larger, much more dangerous, than even Newcastle at his most pessimistic could have foreseen. How the clash of tiny numbers of men in a frontier conflict would grow into a world war, how that war would redraw the map of Europe’s empires, and how it would transform the relationship between England and her American colonies.

Remember the scene in the movie “Last of the Mohicans” after the surrender of Ft William Henry where the Indian allies of the French attack the defeated English and American marching away. In history, this was a significant turning point in the war. Montcalm tried to prevent the massacre and stop the Indians from carrying off prisoners, plunder and scalps. He failed but his efforts turned his Indian allies against him. But he also ensured the Brits would never trust the French again:
Never again would Indian allies flock to the French colors as they had in 1757. The western Indians would discover too late that the English and provincials at William Henry had been suffering from smallpox, and thus that the captives, scalps, and clothing they brought back carried the seeds of a great epidemic, which would devastate their homelands. No warriors from the pays d’en haut would help Montcalm again, and even the converts from the St. Lawrence missions would become reluctant to take up the hatchet. In coming campaigns Montcalm would rely on regulars and Canadians to oppose the regulars and provincials of the British, fighting increasingly in the European mode that he preferred. But although the conflict would in this sense be Europeanized after 1757, British officers would never be inclined to offer the honors of war to any French force. At the same time, provincial outrage over “the massacre of Fort William Henry” would feed an already ferocious anti-Catholic tradition in New England and intensify an undiscriminating Anglo-American hatred of Indians.

After victory, Parliament decides to tax the Americans for the maintenance of the troops required to maintain all the captured territories. But the underlying motive is to bring the provincials into line and obey the edicts of the Empire. Pitt’s successful policy of treating the colonials as partners was gone. The American Duties Act will create a great deal of unrest:

As Israel Mauduit, one of the agents representing Massachusetts’s interests to the House of Commons, reported, there did not seem to be a single man in Parliament, who thought that the conquered provinces ought to be left without Troops, or that England after having run so deeply in Debt for the conquering of these provinces, by which Stability & Security is given to all the -American Governments, should now tax itself for the maintenance of them. The only Difference of opinion…was that Mr. Grenville said he did not expect that America should bear more than a good part of this expense; Whereas other leading Members not of the Ministry said it ought to bear the whole.

Effective imperial reform required not only the erection of a militarily secure and financially sound institutional structure, but new habits on the part of the colonists and attitudes unlike the evidently self-interested ones they had shown during the war. Grenville thought of the American Duties Act, just as Halifax did the Proclamation of 1763, as a first step toward changing patterns of behavior long fixed, and attitudes deeply ingrained. The colonists needed to be taxed not only to provide the revenues necessary to defend and maintain order among them, but to habituate them to the duties and responsibilities that belonged to all British subjects. Like the reform of the Indian trade and the prohibition of settlement beyond the Appalachian crest, the underlying issue in Grenville’s package of fiscal measures was always control: sovereignty: dominion. By delaying the imposition of a stamp tax, he intended to ease the transition for colonists who were certain to resist their new, subordinated role in the empire. He expected colonial opposition, but he also expected to prevail. Nothing the colonists could do would deter George Grenville from pursuing the end of imperial control to which taxation was a means. No colonial protests would prevent him from exercising the parliamentary sovereignty of which taxation was both tool and symbol.

Throughout the weeks in which the government proposed its reforms and the House of Commons adopted them, the two most striking features had been, as it were, absences: the absence of debate and opposition, which we have seen; and the complementary lack of any sense that there might be alternative means to achieve the ends of financial stability and military security in postwar North America. Why not request the colonists’ financial support rather than try to compel it? Why not ask the colonial assemblies to raise provincial troops and garrison the necessary posts? The war’s lessons, as understood in Whitehall and Westminster, answered those questions simply enough: there was no relying on Americans. The war had proven, to the satisfaction of everyone who had a voice in the formulation of policy, that American assemblies would only support the empire if they could profit from it; that American taxpayers were tightfisted and self-interested; and that American soldiers were too insubordinate and desertion-prone to be entrusted with colonial defense. But had the war really proven those things so unequivocally? The last years of the conflict, in fact, could be understood to have shown exactly the opposite.

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fred Anderson's Crucible of War is a sweeping chronicle of the French and Indian (Seven Years') War and its impact on both American and European society. Anderson posits that the war, often lumped together with the earlier dynastic struggles and interminable conflicts of the 18th Century, was in fact the Western world's pivotal event of the 1700s. From a minor skirmish between British surveyors (among them George Washington) and French soldiers over disputed territory in the Ohio Valley, to protracted campaigns and bloody set-piece battles in Canada, Silesia and India, it certainly changed the course of history: Britain emerged as the world's dominant imperial power, while at the same time weakening its newly-expanded territories in the Americas. Anderson proves equally adept rendering military set pieces and personalities (from military leaders like the recklessly heroic James Wolfe and the arrogant, genocidal Jeffrey Amherst to political figures like William Pitt, Lord Bute, Patrick Henry and John Adams) as untangling the political disputes of Georgian England; he also detonates some pervasive mythology about the war, for instance depicting Wolfe's seizure of Quebec as a lucky gamble rather than a military masterstroke. He's also commendably inclusive in presenting both the American colonists, who found the war increasing their internal unity while alienating them from the imperious British, and the Native American nations caught in the conflict (particularly the Iroquois, who found their power waning due to increasingly rigged deals, unchecked speculation) as co-participants equal to England and France. The book shows that the war's "end" in 1763 was nominal; Britain found its military overstretched, with Native groups from Pontiac in the Midwest and the Cherokee in the South rebelling against broken promises, resulting in increased taxes and military presence that, in turn, antagonized American colonists on the road to Revolution. It's a complex, weighty topic that Anderson treats with sharp prose, robust insight and admirable thoroughness. An essential read on early American history.

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Detailed analysis of the French and Indian (F&I) Wars, also known as the Seven Years War, and its influence on the course of history. Anderson contends the F&I Wars laid the groundwork for the American Revolution and his case is compelling. It points out that cultural misunderstandings started very early, and there were many cultures involved, including the English, the Anglo-Americans, the French, the Franco-Americans (including those in Canada), the many American Indian tribes that joined alliances, and the tribes who desired to remain independent.

It is structured around groupings of most impact. It starts with the colonial and imperial situations at the beginning of the war. It then moves into the phases of fighting on the North American continent, follow-on fighting in other places in the world, and the aftermath of adjustment to the British Empire’s victory. It contains one of the best explanations of the Stamp Acts, and their consequences, that I have read.

The author excels at explaining the context in which these events took place, the battles (strategy, tactics, participants, and outcomes), and is one of the best examples of portraying the American Indian tribes as astute participants in the politics of the era (rather than the old-fashioned treatment as mostly ignorant “savages.”) For example, the American Indian tribes knew about the value of land ownership and the power it entails, which is often discounted in older histories of this period.

I cannot even imagine how much research went into this book. It is hard to complain that a book is too thorough, but at over 900 pages, the author seems to have covered all the vital material (and more). Anderson’s aim is far-reaching – he wanted to create a book that would appeal to historians and scholars, as well as us “regular readers” who are interested in history. It highlights a period of time that is often overlooked. It is written in a storytelling style and tries to avoid dry factual recitations (which it mostly achieves). I learned a lot from this book and recommend it to fellow history lovers.

[Creighton · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Crucible of War by Fred Anderson was a really good book on the Seven Years War; I would venture to say it is the gold standard on this subject. I feel I came back from this book with a more enlightened view on the Seven Years War, so I feel fulfillment for the amount of time I have spent reading it. I would definitely recommend it, and say that if you want to understand the American Revolution, you should give this book a read.

[Jerome Otte · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book excels in three respects. First, Anderson is a superb writer, as close as one will find to the Great Parkman. Second, it abounds with terrific maps and illustrations, many of which I have not seen before, from the Clements Collection at the University of Michigan. Third, and most importantly, Anderson does the best job of anyone I know in justifying the thesis that it was this war, and not the Revolution, which was the most significant conflict of the 18th century from "America's" standpoint because it lay the foundation for the inevtiable schism between the Colonies and the Mother Country. Time and again, Anderson demonstrates how almost every Colonial rejection of British hegemony during this period sowed the seeds which bloomed in April, 1775. An absolutely top-drawer read that herewith becomes a must for every serious student of American history and of this fascinating war.

Anderson's subject is a relatively small slice of US history. The conflict known variously as the French and Indian War or the Seven Years War, along with the war's immediate aftermath. His narrative is highly informative. He describes how isolated skirmishes on what was then America's western frontier escalated into a true global war, involving every major European power. He convincingly explains how England eventually came to triumph over her rivals, and to inherit much of France's erstwhile colonial empire. Although his focus in on North America, he does not neglect events in Europe. He then shows how events like the Stamp Act Crisis and Pontiac's Rebellion were inextricably linked to the war and its outcome.

Anderson deserves credit for his skillful blend of diplomatic, military, economic and social history into a coherent whole--he should be a model for other scholars in this respect. Also noteworthy is his clear identification of the interest of the four main groups involved in the North American conflict--the French and their Canadian colonists, the English, the American colonists, and the Native Americans--and his untangling of the conflicts both within and between these groups.

While specialists may end up quibbling with some of the details of Anderson's interpretations, he seems to me to have amply demonstrated his claim that the French and Indian War was an extremely important influence on the revolutionary events of the following decades.

However, this book is not your typical and, I have to admit perennially enjoyable account of British Glory and Empire Building at the expense of France. No. Read the title and I can tell you this is most definitely an American academic writing an American history of what is argued by this author as an essentially American war. In its favour this makes for both a revealing and detailed account upon the pretty much indispensable role the Indians and colonials had upon the successful British prosecution of the war. If perhaps not winning the war for Britain then surely preventing it's defeat, the author puts emphasis on factors such as the Indian nations siding with the British and the massive manpower contributed from the often reluctant colonies.

Oddly, while discussing the battle on the Plains of Abraham, Anderson claims that the British General Wolfe blundered into the battle without a plan, as part of a suicidal death wish. No evidence is presented to support this revisionist accusation, nor does Anderson disclose how he knows what was going on in Wolfe's mind. And after the 1760 fall of Montreal, we, inexplicably, cease to see anything from the the perspective of the French.

Unfortunately, this is NOT a military history of the French & Indian War. In fairness, the cover featuring Wolfe's heroic and idealized death on the Plains of Abraham and the quote from John Keegan claiming that Anderson's work compares favorably with Parkman's classic makes the issue more confusing for the potential reader. But Anderson clearly lays out the primary motivation and objective in writing this book in the introduction - and it certainly isn't to write the definitive military history of the French & Indian War, let alone the larger Seven Years War, of which North America was but one (albeit central) battlefield.

Rather, Anderson's objective is to place the events of the Seven Years' War in their proper historical perspective and, above all, to trace the enduring legacy of the wartime interaction between colonists and their ostensible countrymen: the British regular army, their officers and the Crown-appointed officials serving there. The author notes that there has long been a vigorous debate in academia over the central motivation of the participants in the American Revolution (i.e. was it purely class-based materialism as argued by those of the so-called "progressive" school, or more idealism and commitment to republican principles at maintained by "neo-Whig" scholars?), but striking (and misleading) agreement on the Stamp Act of 1763 as the fundamental point of departure. Anderson argues that this has obscured the importance and centrality of the Seven Years War in shaping the thoughts and actions of the colonies and Whitehall, alike, and ultimately leading to a war of independence that neither side originally sought nor wanted. The 1760s were thus not the pre-revolutionary years that Americans think of them as, but rather "post-war" years.

[Myke Cole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent narrative history of the social, economic, and military aspects of the Seven Years War, in both Europe and the burgeoning Americas, and their role in sparking the American Revolution. Anderson’s narrative style is brisk, and he does a good job of keeping dense topics like the economics of rum manufacture and export relevant and engaging to the overall story.

The author is also careful to hit the topic from all the relevant perspectives, allowing the reader a view from the socially high and low, from Native Americans and continental princes, from Canadian and American roughneck pioneers.

One warning: Anderson sets out to be comprehensive, and he is. This is an absolutely *massive* book, intended for serious students of the topic. It’s intensely high-commitment, and not something to start into if you’re looking for a casual survey of the topic. Still, I’m a lot smarter on the topic than I was before I started. Recommended.

[Al · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably one of the best history books I have ever read. This is in no small measure due to the fact that Anderson is a terrific writer, which made this a very hard book to put down, despite its length. His style made the book flow, and I am amazed at his ability to easily sequence the multitude of events which took place in Europe and in North America. There were no rough transitions, and more importantly, Anderson was able to effectively transition from the strategic to the operational to the tactical, and back again without losing me in the wealth of detail. Anderson also was able to focus on a cast of characters and bring them to life in a way which only added depth to the narrative. Anderson’s analysis of this conflict was excellent. In beginning Part VII 1761- 1763, Anderson reviewed the war in terms of influential cultural factors, which neatly supplemented his political and military analysis. He effectively showed how this war significantly altered the British conception and implementation of Empire, and the political consequences this caused in the home islands. I also think that Anderson strongly defended and proved his thesis that this war was the one which laid the foundation for the rift between the American colonies and Britain. In carrying his narrative beyond the Treaty of Paris in 1763, to political events in 1766, Anderson detailed American reactions to the parliamentary acts which from a British perspective, were designed to bind the Americans closer to the Mother country, but significantly backfired from an American perspective. Anderson included a wealth of illustrations, and most importantly, maps which enables the reader to easily follow the narrative geographically, and emphasizes the strategic points Anderson makes throughout the book. I truly enjoyed this from beginning to end, and will amply reward any reader who picks it up.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I may have bitten off more than I could chew in my reading of Fred Anderson's Crucible of War. It has marked my introduction to the Seven Years' War (or as we call it in the U.S., the French and Indian War). I was mainly looking for a recounting of the military campaigns of the F&IW. Anderson does a remarkable job on that front, never making me feel lost in a gruesome procession of skirmishes and raids, along with the few decisive battles.

My interest in the text waned after the end of Pontiac's Rebellion. Based on the other reviews, this seems to be a common criticism of Anderson's approach to the material. (Maybe I would have been better suited to trying out his shorter volume on the subject, but I was feeling up for a challenge.) His exhaustive coverage on the political legislation in the aftermath of the Seven Years' War was more than I asked for (though does anyone really ask for taxes?). Towards the end, the events blurred into each other, and I very much doubt I'll be retaining much from those chapters. I think the final third of this text could have made for a completely separate book.

Still, I'm glad I read this. It's filled a gap in my historical understanding of Colonial America, although like many quests for knowledge, reading Crucibles of War has raised more questions and awakened other avenues for further exploration.

[John Devlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Expertly done. Anderson not only writes well,expansively and authoritatively, he endeavors to stay away from looking at the 7 years war as all part of the prologue to the revolutionary conflict that preceded it.

He makes many and subtle points, and plots new ground in the relationships between the Indians own internal squabbles and the French and British conflict.

Generationally, he takes my own view, when he argues that Anglophile colonists confronted by task mastering inept English officers created clashes of class that reverberated forward.

When a young Patrick Henry tosses conventions to the side to argue against the planting class and English, it’s a small but telling moment. More importantly it signals a generational shift foreseen in the young 22 year old Thomas Jefferson sitting in the back row, listening enraptured by Henry’s moving oratory.

[Barry Sierer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fred Anderson’s “The Crucible of War” is majestic and rich in detail, the same way I wish more history books were written. Anderson interweaves the political, military, economic, and cultural forces driving three empires (Britain, France and the Iroquois Confederacy) into conflict.

Over the span of the book, the author notes several points in the course of the war where British colonists and British administrators came into conflict about how the resources of the colonies would be directed in the war effort. These points became the seeds of conflict for the American revolution.

The book is a long haul but well worth the read.

[Frank Theising · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is nothing short of a masterpiece. A thoroughly researched, excellently written, and comprehensive account of the Seven Years War (a.k.a. French and Indian War) in North America. Anderson’s historical analysis of the war and its ramifications is both brilliant and compelling. It is amazing that a conflict so consequential to the course of both American and world history has remained relegated to a mere footnote in history, just a hazy backdrop to the American Revolution. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in American history or grand/military strategy. What follows is a condensed synopsis (primarily written for my own future reference).

The 18th Century saw four wars between France and England. The first three were typical European conflicts: limited, bloody, expensive, and indecisive affairs. The fourth, the Seven Years War, broke the mold creating a seismic shift in Europe’s balance of power (11). England and France both claimed vast territories in North America. The French sought to control a sweeping arc from the Gulf of St. Lawrence all the way to the Mississippi Delta. In so doing, they could try to contain the demographically expansive British colonists to the east of the Appalachians, denying them access to the great inland rivers. In so doing the French hoped that the British would have to divert their naval and military strength to protecting their colonies, thus limiting their influence in Europe. For this strategy to work, it was imperative that the British be excluded from the Ohio Country (17).

The Iroquois balanced the two rivals off one another. They agreed to the Treaty of Lancaster, trading Ohio territory for gold and suzerainty over southern Indians. This opened the door to white settlers and kicked off the international competition that would doom the Confederacy’s influence (23). The Ohio Company of Virginia began moving in. They obtained permission to build a trading house (fort) at the forks of the Allegheny & Monongahela by trading a large sum of money to the “Half King” Tanaghrisson to help him sure up his leadership in the Iroquois League (28).

The French and Indians attacked British trading posts that were undercutting their business & began a fort building spree. The French evicted the British from their fort at the forks without a fight and built Ft. Duquesne in its place. Lt Col George Washington was sent to assert the King’s sovereign right to the Ohio Country. The French sent out a force of 35 men to scout out the approaching British. After a brief skirmish/ambush, Jumonville’s force was captured. Although Washington intended to give him the rights of a POW, his Indian allies put a tomahawk through his head. The French attacked Washington at Fort Necessity. Washington signed the surrender (written in French) that admitted to assassinating Jumonville. The defeat produced little response in the colonies but the reports sent to London kicked off a firestorm of activity (66).

This early phase of the war produced a consistent string of British defeats. In Europe the balance of power was shifting. France was attempting to woo Austria away from its half century old alliance with the UK, placing the British in a precarious situation. In North America, the 1754 Albany Congress proposed a Plan of Union to have a single executive responsible for the military preparedness of the British colonies. The Plan of Union was rejected by all the colonies. Parliament intended to send a commander in chief to force the colonies to carry out mutual defense since they wouldn’t do it for themselves. General Edward Braddock’s actions would quickly alienate not only the colonies but their Indian allies with deadly results. Without the aid of the Indians, the French devastate his army, killing him in the process. The French understood the importance of Indian alliances and used them to foil every Anglo-American military initiative for the next three years (107).

Braddock’s defeat shocked London. They gained nothing and let France land sufficient number of men to secure their holdings (124). The British government was paralyzed at home and its diplomatic position abroad was in disarray. The ultimate result was a re-alignment of alliances in Europe. Austria would shift to the French side and Britain would align itself with the German/Prussian kingdoms. The French, led by General Montcalm would square off against the new British General, Lord Loudon. Loudon’s increasingly bitter disputes with the colonial assemblies would lead to a downward spiral of British military fortunes bottoming out in 1756-1757 (135).

Loudon was growing increasingly frustrated with Americans and their unwillingness to quarter troops there protecting them from the French/Indians. His default response was to threaten military force, which only further alienated the colonists. After the French win the naval Battle of Minorca, Newcastle’s government falls apart. Meanwhile, Fredrick, King of Prussia, kicks off the European war by invading Saxony without consulting their British allies (171).

The British suffer another defeat to the French and negotiate a European-style surrender of Fort William Henry. France’s numerous Indian allies, who fought for spoil and trophies to prove their prowess in battle, found this concept foreign and massacred the sick and wounded and ambushed the retreating columns killing the men and abducting the women and children. The Indians, feeling betrayed would not aid the French in such large numbers again. Many of the Indians carried smallpox back with them from Fort William Henry (196-197).

William Pitt, the Great Commoner, takes over and decides to relieve Loudon of his duties and change the policies by which the war was fought (211). Pitt’s strategy was to hold the line in Europe where France was strong while striking in America where it was weak. He would exploit British naval superiority to prevent the French from resupplying or fortifying their position in America. Relying on the more numerous American colonists, he would overwhelm Canada’s defenders, eliminating France as an imperial presence in North America. This would enable them to then strike at a significant source of French wealth in the West Indies. To keep France tied down in Europe, and themselves from getting bogged down on the continent, Pitt would heavily subsidize his German allies’ war effort. To free up soldiers for duty in North America, he would rely on his navy and local militia to defend the home isles. (212-213). Pitt would need to tap into America’s strengths as never before. This reversed the existing preference for using professional soldiers. Loudon’s efforts to unify the colonies had only served to antagonize them and frustrate the war effort. Pitt treated the colonies as allies, not subordinates. He gave them more autonomy and offered inducements to cooperate rather than try to compel them. The result would prove to be a series of victories unparalleled in British history (231).

By offering to partially reimburse the expenses of the colonial assemblies, Pitt was able to place 50,000 men under arms (2/3rds the entire population of Canada). France could only field 10,000 troops plus their Indian allies (236). Crop failures in Canada and the British blockade practically starved the French population in Canada (236-7). Louis XV grew more concerned with fighting in Hanover and protecting their profitable Caribbean islands and began quietly writing off North America out of France’s grand strategy (239). While the British were embarrassed at Ticonderoga, they captured Louisburg where they refused the French military honors of surrender in retaliation for the massacre at Fort William Henry. While the victory was spectacular, Louisburg’s fate was sealed weeks before after French resupply ships had been intercepted by the British and forced to dump their cargo (257).

Ft. Duquesne’s fate was sealed in October 1758 when the Iroquois and other tribes in the Ohio Country abandoned the French. Under the Treaty of Easton, the Penn family returned lands west of the Allegany Mountains if they would stop aiding the French. Amassing overwhelming numbers of soldiers and separating the Indians from the French proved a masterstroke. The British captured Fort Frontenac and its supplies leading to the collapse of French-Indian trade (264). With a garrison of only 300 soldiers, the French abandoned Fort Duquesne as the British approached.

Across the Atlantic, the British scored another coup. Pitt sent a small force to West Africa capturing France’s valuable ports used to export slaves, gold, gum, and ivory. Unfortunately, the financial outlays to Prussia and the Americans was on the verge of creating a credit crisis as London financiers became more concerned with the unending war. Pitt was able to stave off such a crisis by capturing Martinique (308). Within a year, the island produced over £425,000 worth of sugar for the British in addition to other tropical goods like cocoa, coffee, and cotton (315).

By the late summer of 1759, the Indians of the “Six Nations” concluded that the only way to restore their ascendancy over the interior tribes was to harness British military power for Iroquois ends. This temporary shift of alliances would have consequences for the Iroquois far beyond what they expected. The British captured Fort Niagara, eliminating the French portage on Lake Erie and excluding them entirely from the Ohio Country (333). Quebec was protected by the St. Lawrence River which prevented General Wolfe from conducting a proper, European style siege, so he resorted to rape and pillage of the surrounding area to draw out Montcalm’s army (349). Little did Wolfe know, a French relief force under command of Bougainville was enroot to relive the besieged fort. With a lot of luck, Wolfe succeeded in drawing out and routing Montcalm’s forces but died in the course of the battle (362). Bougainville’s forces arrived too late, giving Wolfe’s forces time to regroup and avoiding being caught in a pincer between Montcalm and Bougainville.

The French, nearly broke but with the largest Army in Europe, plot an invasion of the British Isles. They concentrate their invasion fleet at Quiberon Bay (381). Admiral Edward Hawke, counter to standard procedure ordered a “general chase” trusting in the superior seamanship of his crews. This audacious move let his crews attack at will, stupefying the French fleet which kept them from forming in a defensive line. The French fleet was destroyed and the British lost only two ships (382). This removed the last threat to the home islands and sealed the fate of the French in North America.

Despite the weariness of the colonies and the growing debt, Pitt once again calls for a massive American mobilization in 1760, the last year of the war. The goal is to capture the last hold out in New France: Montreal. The Chevalier de Levis, makes one last attempt to recapture Quebec, knowing the garrison suffered starvation and disease over the brutal winter. The second Battle of Quebec was a bloody affair, with both sides desperately hoping for relief to sail down the St. Lawrence River. The disaster at Quiberon Bay ensured no such French fleet would arrive. When the HMS Vanguard arrived, Levis called off his siege and retreated. Besieged by refugees and short of soldiers, food, and cannonballs Montreal surrenders rather than suffer through a bloody siege which they were guaranteed to lose (407).

The Seven Years War had seen conflict on a geographic scale heretofore unimaginable. The North American campaigns of 1758, 1759, and 1760 had mobilized tens of thousands of soldiers (412). France had been able to maintain its empire in North America for more than a century despite British colonists’ superior numbers because they maintained cordial relations with the Indian peoples of the interior. The tide turned against them only after they alienated the Indians by trying to use them as auxiliaries. Conversely, the British reversed their policies that had alienated their own colonists and won a great string of victories (454). In the Indian Ocean. The East India Company, learning of the declaration of war before the French, captured their French counterparts in India (417). The war in Europe would continue to wage on for two more years following British victory in North America (453).

Unexpectedly, King George II died, considerably altering the British political landscape. War erupts along the South Carolina frontier which the British put down quickly (467). British commander Jeffery Amherst had initiated policies limiting the sale of ammunition and liquor to the Indians, giving them both a grievance and the free time to initiate the attack (471). In London, Pitt is facing mounting challenges with growing debt and a war in Europe that will not end. Louis XV calls for a peace based on the status quo but Pitt wants to extract more from the French. His growing list of unreasonable demands contribute to the cabinet aligning against him. The King places the Earl of Bute in the Cabinet, setting off a chain of events that would lead to Pitt losing power and the eventual collapse of Newcastle’s government (482).

When Spain and France form an alliance, Pitt wants to declare war on Spain too. When the Cabinet rejected this, Pitt resigned (485). Britain would declare war on Spain in January 1762. Even after Pitt’s demise, his strategy of conquering overseas empires at the expense of the European continent lived on. The rest of the French West Indies fall like dominoes (490). In Europe, Frederick is on the verge of collapse when Tsarina Elizabeth fortuitously died. The new Tsar Peter III made peace with Prussia and Sweden followed suit shortly thereafter leaving only Austria (493). This occurred right as the British alliance with Prussia was falling apart (495). In May 1762, Spain invades Portugal, a British ally, but is repulsed by the British generals Burgoyne and Lee. Britain seized Havana, the jewel of the Spanish Caribbean much to the despair of France and Spain who then sue for peace.

The Earl of Bute offers extremely generous surrender terms to France, risking a political revolt back home. These obstacles are overcome in an ingenious three part swap. France would give Spain Louisiana, Spain would surrender Florida (Georgia to Mississippi) to Britain, and Britain would return Havana to Spain (505). The war ended, Britain struggles to pay down its debt right as the largest Indian rebellion in American history erupts (512). The colonists were flooding into the sparsely populated back country, making governance difficult. Pontiac’s War started outside Detroit (538) and by July every British post West of Detroit had fallen (541). Amherst encourages the spread of Smallpox to help beat back the Indians (542-3).

Neither Pontiac nor any of the other Indians ever believed it was possible that Onontio (“Great Father,” the title given the governor of New France) would hand over eastern North America to the British. They couldn’t understand how they were losing their lands when they had never been defeated. The revolt represented an attempt to “awaken” Onontio who had somehow fallen asleep (545). The British assumed such a wide-spread revolt was all part of some French conspiracy. In reality, it was a series of loosely coordinated revolts all responding to white encroachment and animated by a religious revival with pan-Indian overtones (546). Amherst is recalled and Gage placed in command (553).

The laws passed by the new government coalition of Grenville and Halifax would prove disastrous (559). They had learned very different lessons from the war than had the colonists. A substantial Redcoat Army had been kept in America because of the Indian invasion but also because it was the best solution available to avoid rapid demobilization given the vast new empire that needed policing (560). To keep such a large force, despite the growing debt and parliamentary objections, it was imperative that the colonies pay for it. In their minds it seemed both reasonable and fair since the colonists had profited so handsomely during the war (563). Grenville gets an omnibus bill passed known as the American Duties Act of 1764. It passed with little opposition and large majorities. Nobody seemed too concerned that it could radically revise the relationship between the colonies and the mother country (581). The Stamp Act and the Quartering Act followed shortly thereafter (581).

While these seemed like highly reasonable and brilliantly coordinated set of policies to address the substantial debt, they didn’t really factor in the depression then raging in 1764. This depression was the largest factor shaping the colonial response (588). Many assumed the end of the war would mean a return to booming business and an end to the recession. Unfortunately, the Americans merchants still had warehouses full of British goods that they could not unload, let alone consider purchasing more from Britain. The advent of peace, onset of the recession, the end of transfer payments from Britain for the war effort, and the various local challenges all loomed larger than the abstract needs of an empire that was no longer at risk (602).

As General Gage and his army are in the West due to the Indian revolts, riots begin to break out on the coasts that that threaten to collapse imperial government (637). Gage preparing to move his army east, asks the House of Commons for help…the Quartering Act was the result. Back in London, Grenville is relieved and a new, mediocre government forms (655). In the Virginia House of Burgesses, a young Patrick Henry argues that the House of Commons does not have the right to tax Virginians. His comments were stricken from the official record and never approved but found their way into local newspapers which spread the news up the coast to Boston. The people of Boston assumed that Virginia’s colonial government had taken a bold stand for colonial rights (664-5).

Riots broke out in Boston, Newport, and other towns. Stamp distributors (a potentially lucrative position) resigned to save their houses and property from the rioting mobs (673). Those who held out or defended the law irrevocably damaged their political standing and business ventures (676). New York, Boston, and Philadelphia merchants refuse to order manufactures from Britain until the Stamp Act is repealed (called nonimportation) seeking to enlist English merchants losing business to their cause. While some in the government want to enforce the law and authority to tax, William Pitt calls for the repeal of the Stamp Act (699). Benjamin Franklin travels to London and testifies in Parliament asserting that the Americans paid for the war in blood and treasure just as much as the British had and were unlikely to ever accept the Stamp Act (706). Parliament re-asserts their authority over the colonies but repeals the Stamp Act on the pretext of economic necessity. Even though the nonimportation had been lifted, the glut of existing merchandise prevented any economic recovery (714). The Stamp Act didn’t cause the convulsions shaking colonial governments but aggravated and magnified them. Far from restoring peace and prosperity, the repeal of the Stamp Act in some ways loosed new devils into the colonial political arena.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historian Fred Anderson’s thesis in ‘Crucible of War’ is that by winning the Seven Years’ War, known in the colonies as the French and Indian War, Great Britain acquired an empire in North America whose people it could not coerce and vast lands it could not control. Thus, the subtitle is ‘The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766.’ The new empire would prove hollow.

In Anderson’s view, the tendency to use the Peace of Paris in 1763 as the starting point of reference in accounts of the American Revolution “makes the imperial events and conflicts that followed the war… into precursors of the Revolution.” But, Anderson argues, that is not how Americans and Britons viewed the Sugar Act and Stamp Act crises. They did not see a revolution coming. The American Revolution was not foreordained and scholars need not attempt to fix “the original character of the Revolutionary controversies in radical or conservative impulses.” Thus, at 862 pages, this study of war and empire is more about contingency and human responses to unanticipated problems than impersonal historical forces. Anderson does not ignore the ideological origins of the Revolution; he de-emphasizes them. Moreover, he presents the Seven Years’ War as the most important event of the 18th century in North America, even more important than the next war that founded a nation.

So this story begins a decade earlier, in 1754, than usual accounts of the ‘war for indepedence.’ ‘Crucible of War’ is less about the cultural interaction of French, British, and Indian nations than high politics and war, but Anderson’s treatment of the relationship between the Indians and their European allies, at first the French, and their adversaries, the British army and English settlers west of the Appalachians, provides adequate context to understand why one side defeated the other. He synthesizes military, political, and economic history in the retelling of the great battles (the chapter on the Battle of Quebec is scintillating) that turned the tide of the war in Britain’s favor starting in 1758.

Great Britain emerged victorious in 1761. The French, ousted from much of its North American domain, lost access to huge swaths of territory and trade with Indians, the Indians lost as English settlers encroached on their lands (sparking Pontiac’s War in 1763) and the British lost by winning. As Parliament, its loyal agents in America, and the British army victoriously strutted into the post-war era, they soon found themselves hip-deep in vexing problems of finance and control.

The author extends his narrative to five years after the war’s end (1766) through the culmination of the Stamp Act crisis to illustrate the divergent lessons of war learned by Parliament and King on the one hand and colonists and their colonial legislatures on the other. What accounted for the breaking of the bond between metropolis and colonies, so apparently strong when the guns fell silent? Anderson argues that after the great victory their relationship reverted to the early war years when colony governments chafed at the imperious demands of British commanders-in-chief to supply money, soldiers, and supplies. This old relationship foundered on misunderstandings of what each side expected of the other. After a brief period of cooperation ushered in by William Pitt’s leadership of the war effort – during which Great Britain and its colonies cooperated to defeat the French – the old, adversarial relationship returned to chart the post-war years.

Thus, with the war now over, Parliament believed its colonies would pay the taxes and customs duties needed for Great Britain to pay the maintenance of a standing army in America, just as it had believed the colony governments should have dutifully supported the fight against the French. After all, wasn’t it right for the colonies to pay for the defense provided by the British army against Indian raids? Wasn’t it right for the colonies to pay taxes to the government whose military had just won them a seemingly limitless continent? To the contrary, the colonists accused the army and Parliament of ignoring the vital contributions of provincial armies. Tens of thousands of farmers and laborers fought alongside redcoats in victory.

We know the rest of the story: the colonists did not view the Sugar Act and Stamp Act the same way as did their overseers in Parliament. Their ferocious opposition underscored tensions that, Anderson argues, harkened back to the early war years of 1754-1757: “Thus the stories of blood spilled to create an empire and blood spilled to resist that empire’s sway become the same story.” The Stamp Act did not cause these tensions; it illuminated them. Soon colonists began to not only deny Parliament’s right to tax them without elected American representatives but to deny Parliament’s sovereignty altogether.

Maybe it did not have to be this way. Anderson argues that instead of attempting to coerce Americans into paying taxes and staying out of Indian lands (the Proclamation of 1763 forbid settlement west of the Appalachians by most English subjects), Parliament and King could have done nothing. In other words, defy the structure: the logic or rule by which the pattern of human behavior occurs, as my friend Naeem Inayatullah might put it. In other words, the empire should have let go of the need to control – let the American colonists do what they wish – but is it not this addiction to the drug of control upon which empires subsist?

Control of North America would prove an illusion that brought on disintegration of the old order. But Anderson’s emphasis on contingency to explain the onset of Revolution cannot entirely account for – I don’t believe he intends it to – WHY colonists responded as they did to Parliament’s actions. It cannot entirely explain why Americans opposed Great Britain’s attempts to define the nature of their relationship. To better understand the evolution in colonists’ attitudes that drove their actions toward the mother country, the changes in the structure of colonial society with respect to hierarchies and dependencies, one may want to read Gordon Wood’s ‘The Radicalism of the American Revolution’ or Bernard Bailyn’s ‘The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.’ Contingency cannot alone explain why British subjects living in the colonies convinced themselves, however reluctantly at first, they should violently overthrow their government. Nonetheless, ‘Crucible of War’ is an excellent contribution to our understanding of early American history. Fred Anderson authors a deeper context around the events that led to the creation of the United States as well as a lesson for we who witness the folly of American empire today.

To understand why Britain’s empire ran aground upon the victory of the Seven Years’ War is to understand how empire is self-consuming, how misunderstandings and unrealistic expectations – and a belief in one’s own greatness – can lead to ruin. One can indeed bite off more than one can chew.

And this lesson on America on p. 745: “Americans who would have been imperialists in any case became Revolutionaries first, and the concepts of equality, rights and freedom on which they took their stand became the basis for the unconventional confederated policy that they liked to call ‘the empire of liberty.’ But an empire of liberty was, of course, still an empire, and one might argue that the establishment of the United States merely resulted in the subjugation of a continent and its previous residents by the Anglo-Americans who would have dominated it anyhow.”

The United States was born both an empire and a republic – after a conflict “in all its contingency, confusion, and cultural complexity” that “crystallized competing visions of empire.” Anderson concludes it did indeed matter that it was an American, not a British, empire that came to dominate North America. Millions of Americans today would agree as they cherish their equality and wealth. The ancestors of Native Americans would also agree – as they reflect upon peoples and cultures now extinct. Whether history could have turned out better for them, however doubtful, is ultimately unknowable. But absence of certainty in the hypothetical should not obstruct one from coming to terms with what actually happened.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crucible of War by Fred Anderson

This tome won multiple history prizes in 2001 including the Francis Parkman Award. It covers the period of the French and Indian War, Pontiac’s Rebellion and the Stamp Act Period.

The book covers the period in a linear timeline - so it is easy to follow. All the big battles are covered to some extent with a good footnoting and attribution. The narrative was pretty engaging. I did not love all the pages devoted to Parliament and coverage of some of the battles in Europe (known as Seven Years War). And the part covering the Stamp Act was a bit dry. But it’s clear the author certainly knows his material.

I feel the narrative was the most interesting when covering the four major figures of the period. They are already known to the lay reader: George Washington, Lt. General James Wolfe, General Louis Montcalm and Chief Pontiac.

I have read many books on Washington and I’ve also read all the Pierre Berton and Francis Parkman histories on these wars. This is the most comprehensive one book view and is the best at exploring the causes of the French and Indian War and the troubles that would stoke the Revolutionary War some twenty-five years later.

What follows are some of the more interesting insights that I gleaned.

1. Massachusetts had the highest enlistment rate in the French and Indian War.

2. Pennsylvania was the state most heavily impacted by battles because western Pennsylvania though proximate was largely unsettled.

3. Washington fabricated a fake report to disavow his group’s execution of Jumonville in 1753.

4. Washington was incredibly young, inexperienced and impatient as a leader as he singlehandedly sparked the start of the French and Indian War. However, it is clear some other event would have triggered the War.

5. It is still not known exactly why Washington’s life was spared when he was captured by Jumonville’s brother. Perhaps it was understood how difficult it could be to control some of the allied Indian tribes who routinely kidnapped, killed and scalped unarmed prisoners.

6. In one of history’s great twists it is likely that without Washington’s leadership America would have lost the Revolutionary War. But it was the vast military experiences he acquired in a very bloody French and Indian War that were incalculable. In fact he lost battle after battle and nearly lost his life on multiple occasions. Washington was a survivor. In the Revolutionary War he escaped the most dire situations and always led his troops to fight another day. He also relied heavily on the French to help win that war.

7. Lt. Gen. Wolfe was appointed by Pitt to be one of the four lead commanders in the North American campaign in the French and Indian War. He was universally disliked by his subordinates - three of whom outranked him. He was preternaturally boyish looking. But Pitt saw something in him.

8. The Battle of Quebec is one of the most dramatic battles in the annals of history and Anderson covers it in dramatic fashion.

9. Wolfe was already wasted by disease and the seasonal we window for attack was closing when he made the famous decision to march his army up a hidden single track to the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City.

10. Wolfe believed that with his plan he would be killed on the battlefield anyway and die a hero. It turns out he was right. But before he died he was told that they also had captured the city from the French which he certainly did not expect. Perhaps old Pitt knew what he was doing when he put this maniacal man in charge.

11. It also turns out that Montcalm was waiting at the east end of Quebec with most of his French Army. Eventually he realized he was duped and he and his troops rode out to the west to the Plains of Abraham. And there Wolfe and thousands of his redcoats were already lined up in formation. Of course any Canadian or American student - who wasn’t sleeping during history class - knows what happened next.

12. Montcalm is probably my favorite character from the book. He seemed to possess a decency, a caution and a resignation that seemed somewhat endearing.

13. Before Wolfe died from his wounds on the battlefield he was told by his men that they had captured the city from the French. Perhaps old Pitt knew what he was doing when he put this maniacal man in charge.

[An aside. Quebec is the prettiest city in North America - in my view. There is a ton of military history to explore here. I remember a sightseeing trip there years ago quite fondly. Of course my young children at the time liked the gelato shoppes best and I am sure they were thinking “Boy Dad sure likes his battlefields”.]

14. Chief Pontiac’s War was more trouble for the British than I had remembered from my earlier readings. The problem for Pontiac is that the tribes would often give up any military advantages when they left for the winter. But there sure was enough death and chaos created. Of course the settlers would remember this forever and unfortunately were not so careful to remember the specific tribes that were responsible for the atrocities - thinking of all Indian tribes as savages.

15. Back in London the Parliament and a young King George were appalled at the success of the savages. What are we spending this money on? General Gage knew that the Indians would be unable to sustain any long lasting victories. They had no ships or supplies.

16. Chief Pontiac’s big downfall was the infighting

Pontiac himself drew a fatal conclusion. He thought that the war had earned him his enemy’s respect, and that Gage’s promise of support would establish him as a chief over all the peoples of the old pays d’en haut. He was right about the high opinion Gage and Johnson had of him, but wrong about its rewards

After the War, Pontiac soon lost his influence over the tribes. After moving to what is now the state of Illinois, he was soon thereafter murdered by a nameless Peoria warrior. According to Anderson “No one felt - not even his sons - obliged to avenge Pontiac’s death”

4 stars. Glad that I read it.

[Rindis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The French and Indian War gets enough attention that I wasn't sure I was in need of a book just on that part of the Seven Years War.

Boy, was I wrong.

Narratively, the focus is around events over several hundreds of miles of indifferently-settled tracts of North America, and the personalities surrounding that. Just as a history of the main campaigns of the French and Indian War, this book has a lot to recommend it. Anderson also goes deep into the forces that shaped all of this. For example, he spends a fair amount of time looking at the differences between British regulars, and provincial (largely New England) soldiers. Commanding officers generally distrusted the provincials, finding them to be horribly insubordinate. Americans tended towards a world view of contracts, and saw military service as such (including a term of service, after which the contract was void), instead of pure subordination to authority. Moreover, the poor, underemployed, class that British soldiers generally came from did not really exist in the North America; there wasn't enough population to have spare workforce lying around.

In addition, there is a very welcome focus on Indian relations. One of the overall focuses is how the Iroquois Confederacy managed to undermine its own position (largely while trying to strengthen it), and the shift of circumstances broke their ability to hold the Ohio watershed free of Europeans. There's some very good looks at the internal politics of the major colonial states, and just how dysfunctional they could be (to the point that I'm wondering where to find good books on Colonial Pennsylvania and Virginia).

And, it's largely aimed at showing how all the effort put into winning a war in North America caused the dissolution of the empire that existed before the war. The war tested the United Kingdom's abilities to the utmost, and brought a lot of attention to a part of the world that had been somewhat allowed to drift along. The pressures of the war got the various colonies working together for the first time, and also came with a greater realization of how much there was to administer. The book continues on directly with Pontiac's War, and the economic downturn that came after the peace. It effectively finishes up with the Declaratory Act, and shows how the Sugar Act was a finely-crafted bill meant to stimulate the New England economy at the same time it raised revenue.

There's a lot of things going on in this book, and they're all handled well, and at reasonable length. I don't know that he entirely succeeds in his prime goal of showing just how the act of gaining a large chunk of North America from France led Great Britain to lose that part it had started with, but the through lines are there, and it is all well handled.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though long overshadowed in the traditional historical narrative by the American Revolution, the Seven Years’ War, as Fred Anderson argues, is the most important event in the eighteenth-century North American history. Fought in the untamed wilderness which both France and Britain claimed, the struggle brought an end to the French empire in North America. Yet ironically in doing so, it sowed the seeds for the eventual collapse of Britain’s own empire in the Americas by expanding it beyond a manageable size and creating pressures that ultimately led the thirteen colonies to rebel. This war and its legacy is the subject of this superb book, one that offers a complex and inter-layered narrative of the origins, conduct, and consequences of this often-ignored conflict.

Anderson begins by examining the interaction between the British, the French, and the Iroquois in the Ohio Valley. Sandwiched between the two European empire, the Iroquois Confederacy played one off the other successfully for many years. Yet land concessions to the British in the 1740s soon paved the way for growing encroachment of the Ohio Valley by British colonists, prompting the French to assert their own claims to the region. When war erupted in 1754 (as a result of a clash between a French force and a party of Virginians and Indians, one carefully reconstructed and dramatically retold by Anderson), it expanded gradually into a general conflict between Britain and France, with fighting taking place on nearly every continent.

The war is the dominant focus of Anderson’s book, and he supplies a readable and insightful narrative of the course of the war. While his focus is predominantly on the political and military struggles in North America, he also provides an description of the relevant British politics and a summary of the war in Europe. Particularly notable is his coverage of the Native Americans, which he depicts not as opportunistic savages but as canny political operators who saw themselves as free agents involved in a web of relationships with each other as well as with the colonial powers. Though the book bogs down in his subsequent examination of the postwar adjustments to British victory, these chapters make for fascinating reading by demonstrating just how close the link was between the problems posed by Britain’s triumph and the protests that ultimately would lead to rebellion.

By the end of the book, it is hard to deny the merits of Anderson’s argument. Through his expert analysis and deft interweaving of people and events, he succeeds in restoring the Seven Years’ War to the pivotal place it deserves in American history. Clearly written and supplemented with numerous images and maps, it is a masterful study of the war, one unlikely to be surpassed in its breadth of coverage or quality of its analysis. For anyone seeking a history of the war and its legacy for American history, this is the book to read.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was hiking on the Appalachian Trail, a common rejoinder to whining about terrain was, "They fly airplanes to Maine, you know?" If you want to take on a tough guy task, it was implied, then either act like a tough guy and stop complaining or buy a plane ticket. I thought about the airplane to Maine while trudging through this book. Fred Anderson has written a pared-down version of Crucible of War ( at a very reasonable 288pp) called The War that Made America. I, however, scorned a moderate, well-maintained weakling's path - especially one with such an egregious title. I wanted the real white-blazing, no-slack-packing, thru-hiker history buff's experience and I got it.
This book is magisterial. It will probably stand as the definitive account, for the foreseeable future, of one of the most pivotal events in world history. It is well-written, well-reasoned and well-documented. Eventually, I couldn't wait for it to be over, but that speaks more to my laziness and indiscipline than any fault of Anderson's.

[Carson Stones · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Revolutionary era was exceedingly complicated. What follows is my attempt to make sense of it through six books:

1) Crucible of War by Fred Anderson https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

2) The Glorious Cause by Robert Middlekauff https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

3) Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...

4) The Oxford History of the French Revolution by William Doyle https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...

5) The Campaigns of Napoleon by David Chandler https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...

6) Empire of Liberty by Gordon Wood https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...

Part I: Britain Triumphant

Throughout human history, there occur from time to time single events which trigger chain reactions that ultimately reorder the world. A few well known pivotal moments include Gavrilo Princip’s assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Julius Caesar’s crossing the Rubicon, Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the church door in Wurttemberg, or the detonation of the atomic bomb at Trinity in New Mexico. Each of those events triggered such well known eras in history as World War I, the fall of the Roman Republic and beginning of the Empire, the Reformation, and the Cold War.

The Revolutionary Era in The Americas and Europe typically defies such easy ordering. Nonetheless, if challenged to pick a single event that turned the early modern world upside down, I would pick May 28, 1754 – the day in which Lieutenant Colonel George Washington and a small contingent of Iroquois Mingo warriors led by the “half-King” Tanaghrisson ambushed a force of French Canadians in the Ohio backcountry (modern day Pittsburgh). Acting under orders by Virginia’s Royal Governor, Robert Dinwiddie, which had not been approved by the British Government in London, Washington’s militia was sent into the territory to protect a fort currently under construction by the Ohio Company. When the militia came across a small force of French Canadians under the command of Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville, the young and inexperienced Washington, who did not fully appreciate Tanaghrisson’s enmity toward the French, watched helplessly as the Iroquois warriors slaughtered de Jumonville and his men (though the details are controversial). Nevertheless, the killing of a French envoy in such a manner and, more troublingly, the encroachment of French forts in British North America, had repercussions across the Atlantic and the conflict eventually escalated into a global war between Britain and France known as the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763).

Much like any pivotal moment in history, Washington’s ambush at Jumonville’s Glen was simply the spark that lit the powder keg – that is, the preexisting geopolitical conditions were ripe for another conflict between the European powers, namely: Britain, France, Russia, Austria, Prussia, Spain, and Portugal. Prior to the French Revolution, many of the great European powers were ruled by absolute monarchs who conducted limited, but expensive wars to acquire territory or avenge losses from previous wars. Additionally, because many of these powers held foreign territory in India, the Caribbean, and North America (Britain, France, and Spain), South America and the Philippines (Spain), West Africa (Portugal), and Central and Eastern Europe (Russia, Austria, and Prussia) a conflict between any two powers that broke out in one region, like the Ohio backcountry, could easily spread to other continents. As soon as the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) ended the last pan-European conflict known as the War of Austrian Succession, the European powers immediately began preparing for the next Gentleman’s war in which they could recover their lost territories from the previous conflict, thus creating a new status quo ante.

In Fred Anderson’s own words, what set the Seven Years’ War apart was that:
“Unlike every prior eighteenth-century conflict, the Seven Years’ War ended in the decisive defeat of one belligerent and a dramatic rearrangement of the balance of power, in Europe and North America alike. In destroying the North American empire of France, the war created a desire for revenge that would drive French foreign policy, and thereby shape European affairs, for two decades. At the same time, the scope of Britain’s victory enlarged its American domains to a size that would have been difficult for any European metropolis to control, even under the best of circumstances, and the war created circumstances of the least favorable sort for Whitehall. Without the Seven Years’ War, American independence would surely have been long delayed, and achieved (if at all) without a war of national liberation. Given such an interruption in the chain of causation, it would be difficult to imagine the French Revolution occurring as it did, when it did – or, for that matter, the Wars of Napoleon, Latin America’s first independence movements, the transcontinental juggernaut that Americans call “westward expansion”, and the hegemony of English-dominated institutions and the English language north of the Rio Grande.” (p. xviii)

The answer to the question as to WHY Britain emerged victorious from the Seven Years’ War rather than repeating the same cycle of previous conflicts stretching back to the era of Louis XIV is long and complicated, but the answer has quite a bit to do with William Pitt the Elder and Britain’s unparalleled ability to raise money. After a series of disasters and early embarrassments due to poor leadership, Pitt emerged as the Leader of the House of Commons in league with the Prime Minister, the Duke of Newcastle. Together, they conceived of a two pronged strategy to reverse the course of the war: First they would borrow heavily in order to support the Prussian war effort which would check French aggression on the European continent and protect Britain’s Hanoverian possessions. Second, they would leverage Britain’s massive naval fleet and launch a series of amphibious assaults on French possessions in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, Newfoundland, and Africa.

While the Prussians under Frederick the Great experienced early success against the French and Austrian forces in Central Europe, they were eventually ground down by the Russian forces of Czarina Elizabeth. Her untimely death in 1762 and replacement by her Prussia-loving son, Peter III, saved the Prussians from certain defeat – in a bizarre twist of fate, Peter was deposed a mere 6 months later due to his reversal of Russian policy towards Frederick, to be replaced by his wife Catherine II. However it was the British naval effort in 1759, later dubbed the annus miribalis (or year of wonders), that truly turned the war in Britain’s favor. In a single year, they scored multiple victories over French fleets in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, successfully invaded Canada, captured Montreal, and seized French possessions in the Caribbean. By 1761, British forces had captured all of France’s chief possessions in India, eliminating their influence on the subcontinent. When Spain finally entered the war in 1762, the British navy responded by shelling Spanish possessions in Havana and Manila, though the outcome of the war was already decided in Britain’s favor by 1763 when the various belligerents sued for peace.

The great irony of the Treaty of Paris is that, despite Britain’s overwhelming victories over France and Spain especially in North America, the European powers still engaged in the customary territory swapping at the war’s end. Britain returned France’s captured slave trading posts in Senegal as well as their trading posts in India with the fatal caveat that the fortifications around them could not be rebuilt. Britain also returned Manila and Havana to Spain in exchange for Florida. But the most important land transfers, which would have far reaching implications in the years immediately following the war, occurred in North America where Britain returned France’s most important Caribbean colonies in return for ALL of their territory in continental North America east and north of the Mississippi River while Spain somehow ended up with Louisiana, or all of the territory between the Mississippi River and the Continental Divide. Neither Spain nor Britain would ever successfully control such large swaths of territory and their attempts to do so would ultimately lead to independence movements across the continent.

Britain’s continental ally, Prussia, who had almost collapsed during the conflict, was left out of the negotiations entirely and acquired no new territory after seven years of war, considering the Treaty of Paris a betrayal. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the native populations of North America, India, Senegal, the Caribbean, and the Philippines were not consulted either, despite their pivotal roles in the conflict (especially in North America) and the unnumbered casualties they suffered fighting for their colonial “allies”. I'll examine the Native American response so British rule in former French territories more fully in the next installment.

Throughout his narrative, Anderson compellingly argues that using 1754 as a starting point allows the revolutionary story to unfold from the perspective of those who lived it as they lived it, and not with the benefit of hindsight; that is, as the subjects of the crowned heads of Europe whose professional (non-conscript) armies were led by an aristocratic officer class fighting colonial-style battles for territory using ancient codes of honor and gentlemanly conduct, such as the taking of sabers after a proper siege. These colonial subjects, professional soldiers, hired mercenaries, and native allies fought and died by the thousands at Minden, HochKirch and Rossbach, Montreal and Quebec, Niagara and Nova Scotia, Havana and Guadeloupe, Manila, Martinique and Minorca,
Pondichery and Plassey, Quiberon Bay and Gibraltar… some for personal ambition, some for imperial greatness, some because their sovereigns despised each other (as was the case of Tsar Catherine and Frederick the Great), and some because they coveted their neighbor's territory. The costs in blood and treasure and benefits to the very few were not lost on the generation who fought in the Seven Years’ War, especially in the years that followed as their taxes went up but their representation did not. In fact, due primarily to the sheer cost of financing these aristocratic wars, many patriotic subjects soon found themselves reluctantly marching down the bloody path to citizenship and nationhood. If you accept Anderson’s argument, the starting point of that self-awareness can be traced back to Jumonville’s Glen.

If the Seven Years’ War upended the 18th century balance of power and set the stage for the Revolutionary era, it was certainly not obvious to anyone in 1763. As I’ll detail in the following sections, it would take many more years for the immense costs of the war to finally impose such overwhelming burdens on ordinary merchants, shopkeepers, and farmers, that they would finally rise up and demand revolutionary change over incremental reform.

In Part II, I'll pick up the story where Fred Anderson and Robert Middlekauf's books overlap in the years following the Seven Years' War. Then, I'll follow Middlekauf's narrative from 1766 to Washington's inauguration in 1789.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Scriptor Ignotus · Rating 4 out of 5]

The definitive conflagration of the eighteenth century—a world war involving every major European power and stretching from Virginia to Montréal, to Nova Scotia, to the Caribbean, to Portugal, to Prussia, to West Africa, to India, to the Philippines; and which both established the First British Empire as the world’s leading colonial power and sowed the seeds of its dissolution—began as a tit-for-tat between small parties of French and Anglo-American soldiers, traders, and native allies over control of the heretofore uncolonized backcountry of what is now western Pennsylvania, where the forks of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers merge into the Ohio.

The Ohio Country was the domain of the Shawnee, Delaware (Lenape), and Mingo peoples, many of whom had recently migrated into the sparsely-inhabited area to avoid a burgeoning population of Anglo-American settlers; and these tribes, at least in theory, were the clients of the powerful Iroquois Confederacy, which had long claimed the region for itself, and which appointed “half-kings” from the Six Nations to represent the Ohio Indians in their negotiations with the colonists. Since the Iroquois had observed a policy of neutrality between Britain and France from the beginning of the eighteenth century, preferring to play the rivals off of one another for their own benefit, their claims to overlordship in the Ohio Country had for some time effectively forestalled European encroachment.

But after the 1730s, as Onondaga (the effective “capital” of the Confederacy) sought to establish itself as the sole purveyor of land rights in the Ohio by acquiescing to a series of dubious treaties with the Anglo-American provincial governments, things began to change. The Iroquois half-kings had no coercive power over the Ohio Indians; their influence was only as strong as the willingness of the latter to cooperate with them. When Onondaga sided with Pennsylvania over the Delawares in their dispute over the validity of the fraudulent Walking Purchase of 1737, the Iroquois managed both to alienate their erstwhile subjects and weaken their own influence in the Ohio Country, as the region began to be filled with now-dispossessed Delawares from the east. An even worse blunder came with the 1744 Lancaster Treaty, in which the Iroquois representative agreed to give up any land claims within the borders of Virginia and Maryland. The Iroquois assumed they were only giving up any hypothetical designs on the Shenandoah Valley; but what the Virginia commissioners neglected to mention was that the colony’s charter granted it a domain that extended westward all the way to the “island of California” and northwest from the Potomac to the western shore of Hudson Bay. As far as the Virginians were concerned, the whole of the Ohio Country was now open to settlement.

As settlers, traders, and land speculators of Virginia’s Ohio Company began flooding into the valley, the administrators of New France became increasingly apprehensive. For the French, the Ohio Country was strategically crucial as a liminal space between the settlements of the St. Lawrence and those of the Illinois; the missing link in a loosely-connected chain of forts, trading posts, and villages extending in a great arc from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to New Orleans. If the Ohio Country could be secured for France, the French could hem in Anglo-American expansion and present their British rivals with a vast and poorly-defensible frontier that could only be defended with large amounts of money and manpower, thus weakening Britain’s military capabilities in Europe and elsewhere. For the same reasons, the British found it necessary to claim the region for themselves, and both the Ohio Company and New France made plans to erect a fort on the same spot: the site of present-day Pittsburgh.

In 1754, the Ohio Company raced to the area and began hastily constructing a pitiful fort, only for a larger French force to arrive during construction and shoo them away. While the French set to work building the far more imposing Fort Duquesne, Lt. Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia sent a small force led by twenty-two-year-old Major George Washington to warn the French to leave the area. Accompanied by a party of Mingos and their Seneca half-king Tanaghrisson, Washington ambushed a French company dispatched to intercept him, inaugurating a cycle of escalatory violence that would eventually encompass much of the globe. Washington created an outpost at Fort Necessity, which was in turn attacked and destroyed by a French expedition from Fort Duquesne. The British government responded to these events by appointing General Edward Braddock as the commander in chief of all British forces in America, giving him virtually viceregal powers over the provincial governments, and ordering him to attack Fort Duquesne. Braddock’s 1755 expedition famously ended in disaster, failing to achieve Britain’s primary military objective while simultaneously escalating the conflict to the point that what was heretofore an undeclared colonial war now threatened to erupt into general war between Britain, France, and their respective allies.

1756, the year in which the Seven Years’ War formally began, saw a major realignment in the European alliance system, with Austria, a longtime British ally, partnering with France and Russia in the hopes of recovering the province of Silesia, which was lost to Prussia in the War of the Austrian Succession; and Prussia, formerly allied to France, making a peace pact with Britain, securing the relative safety of Hanover, of which George II was elector, and placating Prussian fears of the rumored French-Austrian partnership by gaining a pledge of British support against any act of aggression toward “Germany”. The British hoped this new alliance system would create a stable equilibrium in Europe, preventing the outbreak of a European war; but they underestimated the boldness of Prussia’s Frederick II, who promptly invaded Saxony, an Austrian ally, and got himself embroiled in a war against Austria, France, Sweden, and Russia.

The first two “official” years of the war went disastrously for the British. The French captured Fort Oswego on Lake Ontario and Fort William Henry on Lake George; and as the British garrison of the latter was marching out of the fort, they were attacked, massacred, robbed, and taken hostage by France’s Ottawa and Abenaki allies. The Ohio Indians, most of whom now sided with the French, launched devastating raids along the backcountry of Virginia and Pennsylvania. Lord Loudon, having succeeded Braddock as commander in chief in North America, struggled mightily with the provincial governments, who resented Loudon’s coercive efforts to centralize military, financial, and administrative power, as well as his lack of respect for the provincial legislatures, which responded in kind by denying Loudon funds, manpower, and even suitable quarters for his army. Loudon’s exasperation at the provincials—who considered themselves Britons on equal standing with their compatriots on the home island rather than foreign subjects, and their legislatures more-or-less equal to the British Parliament—anticipated the impasse between parliamentary and provincial prerogatives that would later culminate with the American Revolution.

“The delays we meet with,” Loudon wrote to the Duke of Cumberland, “in carrying on the Service, from every parts of this Country, are immense; they have assumed to themselves, what they call Rights and Priviledges, totaly unknown in the Mother Country, and [these] are made use of, for no purpose, but to screen them, from giving any Aid, of any sort, for carrying on, the Service, and refusing us Quarters. . . . opposition [to royal authority] seems not to come from the lower People, but from the leading People, who raise the dispute, in order to have a merit with the others, by defending their Liberties, as they call them.”

The provincial governors, Loudon claimed, had “sold the whole of the King’s Prerogative, to get their Sallaries; and till you find a Fund, independent of the Province[s], to Pay the Governors, and new model the Government, you can do nothing with the Provinces. I know it has been said in London, that this is not the time; if You delay it till a Peace, You will not have a force to Exert any Brittish Acts of Parliament here, for tho’ they will not venture to go so far with me, I am assured by the Officers, that it is not uncommon, for the People of this Country to say, they would be glad to see any Man, that dare exert a Brittish Act of Parliament here.”

Provincial troops resisted service alongside British regulars; firstly, because British military law stipulated that any provincial officer, regardless of seniority, would be considered to rank no higher than a captain when serving with regulars; and secondly, because military discipline in the regular service was extremely draconian. Whereas enlisted men in provincial armies served on a contractual basis, expecting to be well-paid and well-treated during their service because they had other employment options, and usually being led by officers with whom they were personally acquainted and who were often not dramatically wealthier than themselves, the regular enlisted ranks were largely filled with paupers and led by men of superior wealth and social standing, reflecting the greater social stratification of the old England in comparison with the new one. To the provincials, enlisted regulars seemed little more than slaves:

“[Under] regular military discipline, insolence to an officer was a crime that carried a penalty of five hundred lashes; the theft of a shirt could earn a man a thousand; and desertion (no uncommon act among New England troops) was punishable by hanging or a firing-squad execution. An average provincial soldier serving with Abercromby’s [who succeeded Loudon as commander in chief in 1757] army could witness a flogging of fifty or a hundred lashes every day or two, a flogging of three hundred to a thousand lashes once or twice a week, an execution at least once a month.”

American attitudes and British military fortunes both made a dramatic rebound when the reforms of William Pitt the Elder began to take effect in 1758. Instead of ordering the provinces to raise troops at their own expense, which would then be subordinated to the regulars, Pitt invited them to join the war effort as equals, offering massive subsidies for the provincial armies, promising additional rewards for the provinces that made the greatest contribution to the imperial venture (thus transforming intercolonial rivalries from a liability into an asset), and creating a new policy that made provincial officers inferior only to regular officers of the same rank. The reforms inaugurated a surge of goodwill and patriotism in the provinces, which thereafter had little trouble raising the sizeable armies that Pitt needed to accomplish his new war aim: to deprive France of its colonies, including all of New France, while using coastal raids, equally massive subsidies, and supplementary troops to aid Frederick II and Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick in keeping the French tied down in Europe and protecting Hanover.

Pitt’s policies would produce the greatest string of victories in British history: Louisbourg (1758, leading to the tragic expulsion of the Acadians), Fort Duquesne (1758, thereafter renamed Fort Pitt), Fort Niagara (1759), Quebec (1759, in which General James Wolfe, believing he was about to die of natural causes and wanting a hero’s death, undertook what he thought would be a suicide mission by leading half his army down the St. Lawrence past the French guns and scaling the cliffs along the riverbank to besiege the city from the west, only for the operation to succeed brilliantly, his army to win the ensuing battle, and for Wolfe to die a martyr’s death anyway, sealing his reputation as one of the great heroes of British history), and, finally, Montréal (1760). Using its naval superiority to isolate France from its colonies, Britain would also deprive its rival of Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean, its trading posts in West Africa and India, and its main Indian ally in Bengal. When Spain foolishly decided to enter the war on France’s side in 1761, the British promptly deprived it of Havana and Manila, and repelled a Spanish invasion of Portugal.

At war’s end, the British Empire seemed to be at the height of its glory; but the fruits of Britain’s postwar policies in North America showed that trouble was brewing. Jeffery Amherst’s reversal of former (British and French) policies toward the natives, depriving them of gifts and trade goods while doing nothing to stop the illegal encroachment of settlers into newly-accessible lands—all in an effort to cut expenditures and centralize power—prompted Pontiac's Rebellion of 1763: “the most successful pan-Indian resistance movement in American history”. Likewise, coercive economic measures taken by parliament against the American colonies—including the Currency Act of 1754, which threatened to deprive the colonies of the right to use their own currencies as legal tender, even for the payment of taxes; the Quartering Act of 1765; the Townshend Acts of 1767; and the Tea Act of 1773—represented a reversion to the punitive, centralizing, and hierarchical approach to the colonies that had prevailed before 1758 and caused so much provincial consternation.

Thus Anderson credibly argues that the British Empire was more stable under Pitt’s egalitarian wartime leadership than it was after the war ended, when the home island began attempts to transform its relationship with America from a partnership into a master-subject dynamic. Perhaps the only way for the American Revolution to have been prevented, and the Empire to have remained intact, would have been for Britain to do precisely nothing after 1763; not reverting to older models of empire but instead embracing the messy, disorganized, decentralized tangle of cooperative relationships that the Empire had become.

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This excellent book was very long (746 pages of small type), but lives up to its reputation as the Bible of the French and Indian War. It is formatted for easy reading (short chapters, interesting anecdotes mixed with scholarly examination of root causes) and entirely fascinating for anyone interested in the French and Indian War period in America and the social unrest of the 1760s that led to Revolution.

Anderson especially does a great job of presenting the ways that economics, domestic political machinations in Parliament, and other factors inherent in the British Empire at the time dictated Great Britain's management of the war and then, ultimately, the unwise actions the Empire took after the war was over that led to Revolution in the American colonies. God Lord, was the British Parliamentary system complicated at this time! Just understanding the machinations, the departments, the ministries...Anderson does a good job trying to explain, but it is just BIZARRE and not always easy to follow. Yes, that is my American bias showing.

That said, I was actually surprised at how much principled opposition (as opposed to just practical opposition) there was in Parliament to the Stamp Act. There wasn't much (most opposition was practical or self-interestedly political in nature) - but there was more than I thought. And the reality is that the issue of how much control Great Britain LEGALLY had over the colonies was shockingly unclear. The colonies had existed for a half-century or more! And yet...in retrospect, so many things had just...never really been decided or at least tested. Until they suddenly had to be.

The book also does what many French and Indian War books do not, which is to concentrate, if not equally, then at least extensively on the Seven Years' War as it was fought in Europe. The North American theater of the war is all most Americans (and Canadians) think about, but meanwhile literally hundreds of thousands of soldiers were dying on battlefields in Europe, mostly to literally zero effect or consequence in the end. Anderson notes that this was pretty normal for European wars of this period, but still...oh my God.

The book takes the history from George Washington's blunder at Jumonville Glen in 1754 to about 1767, to the repeal of the Stamp Act. In the end, it ably lays the groundwork for understanding the fundamental misunderstandings and ambiguities between the British government and the American colonies that led to Revolution. What was most surprising was that those misunderstandings were always there, but the circumstances of the French and Indian War simply put them in stark and undeniable relief.

A great portrait of the eighteenth-century transatlantic world...highly recommended.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

inston Churchill called the Seven Year's War the first world war, and it can be argued that it was the first, in a string of five great power wars over 190 years, leading to World War II. But for most students of the modern world, especially Americans, who may be unaware that a world war, a great power war was sparked just outside of today's Pittsburgh, PA. If it is thought of, the Seven Year's War is remembered as nothing more than a prelude to the American Revolution. Fred Anderson, of the University of Colorado, Crucible of War is an outstanding, comprehensive military history of that conflict. One of his main intentions is to reorient modern minds to where they can see that it was the Seven Year's War, and not the American Revolution, that became the great conflict of the age.

Until young George Washington, a Virginia militia colonel at the time, sparked a growing conflict between France and Britain in 1754, nearly the last 100 years had seen one colonial conflict after another between France and Britain, to the point where the wars blended together into just generational border and trading conflicts. In that sense, they followed the trend of nearly all European wars for centuries: small armies, fighting far from home, rallied against other principalities in short, bloody conflicts that did little but change some borders and decide a few trading or royal succession issues.

Anderson agrees with Churchill, in that the Seven Year's War was a paradigm shift in the way the modern world fought war. Large swathes of territory were exchanged, the conflict spread among other minor powers on multiple continents and in a sense it was an ideological struggle. And like just about every modern conflict, the peace became harder to win than the war itself, because ideas of order clashed with cultures not desiring wholesale changes in life.

So while the Seven Year's War began in back country Pennsylvania, it spread all along the British and French North American frontier, into the Caribbean, and later, in the second half of the war, among Prussia and other European states in Central Europe, through India, and eventually into the Philippines in the Pacific. Before it was over, several million had been killed or wounded, France was economically exhausted and Britain was nearly as broke, with a larger empire to maintain and an economic system incapable of operating it. Anderson treats his subject as much as epic as he does military history.

His military writing is well done, with proper reliance on strategy, command and control, supply chains, and attention to the effects of terrain on troop movement. But what makes this very readable is his attention to the human side of the conflict: the economic interests, the cultural pulls on Indian tribes, French, English, etc., for that is what shows what the motivation of the conflict was.

This is a comprehensive book, meant to tell the story of the war from the motivation of several vantage points. So it is not primarily the American colonial story, or the English or French or even Indian tribe story. Anderson writes so comprehensively that each side could have received their own book. Because he writes with such a wide scope, he seems to be successful in his attempt to show that history that we know now, with the United States and the successor great power to Britain, was not inevitable; that no one in 1754, least of all an ambitious man like Washington, who hoped to advance in the British military, could have foreseen the events that led to the whole world being turned upside down.

There probably is not as good a one volume telling of this war, that not only competently tells the story of the events, but places them it in the context as a world changing event that drove events for the next several hundred years. This is as good a history of its type as I can recommend.

[Asher Burns · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eerily similar start to this year as last... finished a book that I started the previous year, then a school book and a play we're doing for drama, and then a massive book that set me behind in my reading challenge about a war named for the number of years it lasted.

[David Russo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really good book. Fred Anderson attempts to connect the impact of the Seven Year's War with the emergence of the American Revolutionary War. Anderson does an excellent job of including the writings and speeches of many persons living in the time period discussed so as to prove his arguments, and I especially enjoyed his use of maps of not only North America, but the world. This book is quite large... but NOT dense. The Seven Year's War, more commonly called the French and Indian War, as many do not know (as I didn't know until I read this book), was a worldwide event. Battles for empire between the English and French took place not only on the high seas, but on Western European, North American, and Indian (India) soil, and so the book's thickness only accounts for the fact that the topic is detailed and must be genuinely described in order to be understood. One of the main portions of the book that I really enjoyed was that in which the war's progress and policies in Europe are discussed, a topic seldom discussed in other descriptions of the Sven Years War that I have read... a topic that would not have been brought up had it not been for Anderson's detailed writing style and in-depth research.

The writing style of the book is quite good. It tends to alternate between almost a sort of third person, historical fiction style to a more balanced telling of the events and personalities that shaped the war. I stress that this second mode of writing that Anderson uses is NOT academic and dry, but sounds as if you are listening to a person tell their experiences of a past event that they have taken part in, almost in a slightly more structured conversational tone than that found in a restaurant, a friend's home, church, or the workplace.

This is an awesome book, and I would highly recommend reading it if you would like to know how the British won an Empire, but in the aftermath, misread the intentions and character of a colonial people whose allegiance they lost... Americans!

[Jesse B · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

Forbes Avenue, Stanwix Street, Grant Street, Bouquet Street, and many more.

I doubt a great many native Pittsburghers (Yinzers) could place where the street names of some of the most well traveled routes in Pittsburgh come from. Hell, I always assumed Grant Street was named for US Grant and not for a brash 18th Century Scotsman.

I also doubt many people in Western PA know that a World War started in their backyard when a Native American Chieftain bashed a French Officer's head in and played with his brains while a distraught George Washington looked on. Which is why Crucible of War was such a vital read. Not only did I learn fascinating local history, I also came away with a great understanding of the rise and fall of empires in the 18th century, and just how shockingly consequential yet little discussed The French and Indian War is. Anderson writes an academic history but his prose is engaging and he does liven the book up with some humorous elements (along with the absolutely horrific.)

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good in many ways, but flipping humongous. This is a tough war to make interesting: while it was global in scale and highly consequential, a lot of it was a series of relatively small scale raids and battles around forts in the interior of what's now the US. Other than WIlliam Pitt, there aren't that many super compelling characters around which to build the narrative. I found a lot of this history blurring together, and while Anderson does a nice job showing how the 7 Years' War transformed the British empire and its relationship to the US, I just didn't find this book terribly compelling. There weren't enough "periscope moments" where the writer pops up from the morass of detail and gives you the big picture significance of what he's just discussed or about to discuss. Definitely not a book for the casual reader of military history, unless you have an abundance of patience.

[Joey-Joey-Jo-Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]