1759: The Year Britain Became Master of the World

by Frank McLynn (Author)

• Prizes: ','1','ChildrenBookAge: ','Book Overview: A remarkable new book on a crucial moment in British and world history.','\'Compendious...McLynn deftly recreates the violent subordination of foreign nations, widespread land theft and the wholesale destruction of cultures that was justified by the dream of civilised dominion.\' -- Rachel Holmes * BBC History Magazine *
  \'A stylish and fascinating account of the first global struggle.\' -- Robert Colvile * New Statesman *
  \'McLynn\'s feisty and highly personal take on the pivot point of the Seven Years War adds fresh perspectives to the old story.\' -- Stephen Brumwell * Times Literary Supplement *
  \'Fascinating.\' * History Today *
  \'Magnificent.\' * Sunday Express *','Frank McLynn is currently Visiting Professor in the Department of Literature at Strathclyde University. A full-time writer, his most recent books include Napoleon, 1066, Villa and Zapata, Wagons West and Stanley, all published by Cape and Pimlico.');">

  Used

  Paperback
  2005

  $4.58

  A remarkable new book on a crucial moment in British and world history. Although 1759 is not a date as well known in British history as 1215, 1588, or 1688, there is a strong case to be made that it is the most significant year since 1066. In 1759 - the fourth year of the Seven Years War - the British defeated the French in arduous campaigns in India and the West Indies, in Germany and Canada, and also achieved absolute mastery of the seas. As Thackeray famously remarked in Barry Lyndon, it would take a theologian, rather than an historian, to unravel the true causes of the Seven Years War in Europe, but the spine of the wider conflict was the struggle for global hegemony between Britain and France. Drawing on a mass of primary materials - from texts in the Vatican archives to oral histories of the North American Indians - Frank McLynn shows how the conflict between those two countries triggered the first 'world war', raging from Europe to Africa; the Caribbean to the Pacific; the plains of the Ganges to the Great Lakes of North America. It also brought about the War of Independence, the acquisition by Britain of the Falkland Islands and, ultimately, the French Revolution.