The Seven Years War: A Transatlantic History (review)

This year we are passing the mid-point of the 250th anniversary of the Seven Years' War. The year 1758 witnessed important changes in the fortunes of the belligerents. In North America, despite a reversal at Ticonderoga, the British experienced a number of successes as they and colonial troops captured Louisbourg, Cataraqui, and Duquesne foretelling more dramatic events the following year. In Europe, the campaign marked a turning point as the King of Prussia's previous military successes met with severe checks from Russian and Austrian armies. This was the year in which Britain's Royal Navy demonstrated it versatility, professionalism, and competence in the Mediterranean, off Africa, in the West Indies, North America, and off France's Atlantic and Channel coasts. Although sub-titled "A Transatlantic History," this account of the Seven Years' War remains very traditional and Eurocentric in its thrust. While it takes a topical approach covering the war's origins, conduct, finance and logistics, and interactions with domestic politics, the authors' emphasis is on diplomacy and the search for peace. Narration predominates over analysis. One it left wondering why the book was written, and, given the price, to whom it is addressed. If there is a thesis, it is to be found in the authors' view that the outcome depended largely on the unplanned, the unexpected, the misunderstood, and the misperceived. Did victory in America help to achieve victory in Germany?

Matt Schumann teaches at Eastern Michigan University and Karl Schweizer, who has written and edited more than twenty books chiefly concerning the political and diplomatic aspects of the Seven Years' War, currently teaches at Rutgers University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Chapter one on the war's origins appears quite traditional. Its heavy reliance upon L.H. Gipson's outdated work and the authors' unfamiliarity with North American geography—sending supplies downriver (p. 16) when they travelled upstream to the Great Lakes, and continual references to St. John's, a town in Newfoundland (pp. 8, 9, 21, and 22), when the location of St. John, New Brunswick, which was not founded until 1785, is meant—combined with other errors, is annoying. The chapter on campaigns presents brief accounts of battle after battle in central Europe accompanied by the numbers of infantry, cavalry, and artillery and casualties involved and is tedious. The lack of any maps of central Europe is a real failing for readers are expected to know about the borders of east European regions and provinces and the locations of a host of towns, fortresses, and hamlets. Logistics and finance, as the authors point out, played critical if often unseen roles in deciding outcomes during the Seven Years' War, but they are not the first to point this out or that most of the war occurred elsewhere than on the battlefield. Similarly, domestic politics may have decided as much as armies, but the chapter devoted to the topic is not successful owing to the separate, non-integrated treatment of the five major belligerents and descent into excessive narrative detail in favour of analysis. The text is heavily unbalanced with eight and a half pages devoted to Great Britain and three and a half to France; Russia receives two. The book's final two chapters devoted to the war's diplomacy form the core of the authors' argument, such as it is, that intrigue, misunderstanding, and personal ambition were critical factors in deciding the war's outcome. Schweizer has spent more than thirty years studying, writing, and publishing books and articles on both the complex diplomacy and the place of personal ambition in the war. He is an acknowledged expert on its politics and diplomacy. It remains a puzzle what this unbalanced book contributes that is new. Perhaps, the authors seek to redress revisionist interpretations that deny national myths, for Frederick II of Prussia is clearly the hero of the tale. Despite its claim, however...