The First Global War

Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, by Fred Anderson. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. 862 pp. $40.

For many Americans, North America during the Seven Years' War is in Neville Chamberlain's words a "far-off land of which we know nothing." They vaguely recall the war, if at all, as a bump in the road along the way to revolution in 1776. Fred Anderson seeks not only to challenge this view of the war, but also to tell a fascinating story that few of us ever really knew. He accomplishes this with aplomb and a graceful writing style. The book is no 862-page slog; rather, it grips the reader from the first page and sustains him or her to the end.

Wolfe, Amherst, Pitt, Montcalm, Braddock,Washington: the names are familiar, but their significance is lost ib most of us. The Seven Years' War-known to the Anglo-American colonialists as the French and Indian War-was the fourth and most decisive in a series of military conflicts between the French and British empires. The Seven Years' War was a global war; indeed, it may be considered the first truly global war in modern history. The British and French engaged each other not only in North America, but also in the Caribbean, India, and the Old World. When Spain entered on the French side in 1761, the Philippines too saw military action.

The proximate cause of the war in North America, however, was the growing tension between the French colonialists, the Anglo-American colonial settlers, and the Iroquois Nation. The Iroquois tried to prevent the French from gaining control of the Ohio Valley. The French, on the other hand, viewed with alarm the growing influx of Pennsylvania traders and Virginia land speculators into the valley; they responded with extreme measures, including raids against the intruders. At this point in the story, we meet George Washington for the first time. The governor of Virginia dispatched Colonel Washington to rid the Ohio Valley of the French. After an initial successful raid, Washington blundered badly, beat a hurried retreat, and abandoned the hastily constructed Fort Necessity in the process.

The British response was swift and forthright. The Duke of Newcastle, who led the government of the day, dispatched the hapless General Edward Braddock to rectify the situation and push back the French on all fronts. Braddock proved ill-suited to the task and managed to alienate most of the Anglo-American colonialists in the process. He insisted, for example, on maintaining the rule of the law that subordinated even the highest-ranking provincial officers to lieutenants of the regular army. He also proved inept in his dealings with the colonial governments, "treat[ing] the governors as if they were his battalion commanders instead of men who would have to cajole stubborn, suspicious, locally minded assemblies into supporting the common cause." Braddock died at the Battle of the Monongahela, as did many others under his command. The disaster on the Monongahela was a severe blow to the Anglo-American war effort and left most of the mid-Atlantic vulnerable to the French and their Native American allies.

Anglo-American woes continued as they lost Fort Oswego near Lake Ontario and Fort William Henry in New York. The turning point came in 1758 with the ascent to power in London of William Pitt. His policies, which included relaxing the subordination rule for provincial officers and implementing a system for compensating the colonies for raising troops, led to a deluge of support. Although Britain's basic strategy did not change, the outcome did. Major-General Jeffrey Amherst led a successful siege against Fort Louisbourg in July, followed by the French abandoning Fort Dusquesne in November. Even then, however, not everything went Britain's way. General James Abercromby's assault against Montcalm's entrenched forces at Fort Ticonderoga ended disastrously. Still, the tide seemed to be turning in Britain's...