Empires at War; The French and Indian War and the Struggle for North America, 1754-1763

New York: Walker and Company, 2005. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Robert Severy (Author photograph), Jeffrey L. Ward. xxv, [3], 332, [8] pages. Endpaper maps. Biographical Sketches. Chronology. Illustrations. Notes. A Note on Sources. Index. DJ has minor wear and soiling. William Morgan Fowler Jr. (born July 25, 1944) is a professor of history at Northeastern University, Boston and an author. He served as Director of the Massachusetts Historical Society from 1998 through 2005. He attended Northeastern University, Boston, graduating magna cum laude in 1966. He went on to the University of Notre Dame, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1971. He served in the U.S. Army Reserve from 1970 to 1984. Fowler was appointed an assistant professor in 1971 at Northeastern University, promoted to associate professor in 1977, and full professor in 1980, before leaving to become the director of the Massachusetts Historical Society. He returned to Northeastern on January 1, 2006, after eight years at the society. Fowler also teaches at the Frank C. Munson Institute of American Maritime History at Mystic Seaport Museum and has lectured at the Smithsonian Institution, the United States Naval War College, St. John's Preparatory School, and the Sea Education Association. He is also a member of the Massachusetts State Archives Advisory Commission and a consulting editor to The New England Quarterly. The French and Indian War (1754-1763) was a theater of the Seven Years' War, which pitted the North American colonies of the British Empire against those of the French, each side being supported by various Native American tribes. At the start of the war, the French colonies had a population of roughly 60,000 settlers, compared with 2 million in the British colonies. The outnumbered French particularly depended on their native allies. Two years into the French and Indian War, in 1756, Great Britain declared war on France, beginning the worldwide Seven Years' War. Many view the French and Indian War as being merely the American theater of this conflict; however, in the United States the French and Indian War is viewed as a singular conflict which was not associated with any European war. French Canadians call it the guerre de la Conquête ('War of the Conquest'). On May 28, 1754, a group of militia and Indians led by twenty-two-year-old major George Washington surprised a camp of sleeping French soldiers near present-day Pittsburgh. Washington could not have known it, but the brief and deadly exchange of fire that ensued lit the match that, in Horace Walpole's memorable phrase, would "set the world on fire." The resulting French and Indian War in North America became part of the global conflict known as the Seven Years War, fought across Europe, India, and the East and West Indies. Before it ended, nearly one million men had died. Empires at War captures the sweeping panorama of this first world war, especially in its descriptions of the strategy and intensity of the engagements in North America, many of them epic struggles between armies in the wilderness. William M. Fowler Jr. views the conflict both from British prime minister William Pitt's perspective-- as a vast chessboard, on which William Shirley's campaign in North America and the fortunes of Frederick the Great of Prussia were connected-- and from that of field commanders on the ground in America and Canada, who contended with disease, brutal weather, and scant supplies, frequently having to build the very roads they marched on. As in any conflict, individuals and events stand out: Sir William Johnson, a baronet and a major general of the British forces, who sometimes painted his face and dressed like a warrior when he fought beside his Indian allies; Edward Braddock's doomed march across Pennsylvania; the valiant French defense of Fort Ticonderoga; and the legendary battle for Quebec between armies led by the aristocratic French tactical genius, the marquis de Montcalm, and the gallant, if erratic, young Englishman James Wolfe-- both of whom died on the Plains of Abraham on September 13, 1759. For many, the French and Indian War has been merely the backdrop for James Fenimore Cooper's famous novel, The Last of the Mohicans. William M. Fowler Jr.'s engrossing narrative reveals it to have been a turning point of modern history, without which the American Revolution as we know it might well not have occurred.