“Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766”, by Fred Anderson

 

912 pages, Vintage, ISBN-13: 978-0375706363

Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 by Fred Anderson manages to synthesize several lines of scholarship while also offering many new insights into what can truly be called the first real world war, as well as the decade that followed. While the war itself is front and center throughout a majority of the book, it is the politics behind, during and after the war that also find their place beneath his microscope, especially on how the war initiated a dispute about the very nature of the British Empire that continued even after the peace treaty and led, ultimately, to the American Revolution.

This is a venerable debate amongst academics of the Seven Years’ War and Revolution. One side argues that the Revolution was merely a kind of aftermath of the SYW, while the other emphasizes the Stamp Act and other boneheaded regulations. While the former concentrate on the financial burden and the new western migration that the War brought in its train, the latter portray the Revolution as a conflict over principle or at least ideology, viewing the rebels as deeply committed to the idea that the central government was subject to principled limitations, the founding idea of America, if you like.

Anderson doesn’t see these two concepts as being mutually exclusive. The key to his analysis is the effect the War had on city and country understandings of the Empire, for each drew quite different conclusions from the vanquishing of France: colonists thought their participation in the war had finally shown them to be equal members in the Empire, while the war confirmed Whitehall’s conclusion that the Empire was strictly a top-down affair. Thus, those pesky Parliamentary revenue acts were designed to raise money to support the continuing presence of the British military in America, forcing the colonists to pay in taxes what they previously viewed as gifts due only in times of war.

While Anderson seeks to accommodate these competing historical visions, he also finds time to expand his scope, such as when he explores the tension between European and American styles of warfare, the problems of supply, the role of the British military in America between the War and the Revolution and, especially, the role of Native Americans: here they share the stage with European and provincial characters as coequal players (the index alone refers to thirty Indian nations, and Anderson shows that there were divisions among them, although the War itself encouraged a “nativist” identity in the Ohio Valley).

Anderson extends the book’s reach beyond war’s end to evaluate the aftermath of the conflict, including the Stamp Act, the Quartering Act and all those Indian troubles, allowing him the opportunity to discuss some of the more contentious issues between Americans and Britons while also depicting how militarily overextended Britain had become in gaining the vast territories she had won during the war. Battles and campaigns are well explained by Anderson, but not at the expense of political decision making and diplomacy. The author provides his readers with descriptions of cultural and personal characteristics that had an impact on the outcome of the war, as well.

Anderson’s observation is that many who describe the American Revolution begin the tale at the end of the Seven Years’ War, in 1763; but he believes that the more fruitful start date should be 1754, when relations between the American colonists and the British government were still relatively amicable. The seeds of revolt weren’t sown until during and, especially, after the Seven Years’ War, hence its vital importance to the American nation. While Yanks and Brits still got along relatively well, American’s increasing identity as a special people was growing, as was their realization that they were not the coequal partners in Empire they thought they were.

London ministers and American colonists had, in Anderson’s words, “competing visions of empire”, with colonists drawing on the traditional English concept of limited government constituted by the consent of the governed, while Parliament continuously saw few if any restraints on its own power. These were two irreconcilable visions, and the next question becomes why the rupture occurred when it did. Anderson’s answer is that a decade of mutual misunderstanding accelerated the two sides toward open conflict; he also reminds us that a lot of the arguments supporting resonant constitutionalism are still alive and well today.