Title: Crucible of War: The Seven Years War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766
Author: Fred Anderson
Publisher: Vintage
Date: 2000
Rating: five stars out of five

What this book is / is not
This grand and well-written study serves as a useful and worthy successor to Francis Parkman’s Montcalm and Wolfe, and a great correction to some of the material presented in William Jennings’ sour Empire of Fortune. Anderson’s primary concern is to understand the fate of the British Empire in North America because of the events of the war of 1754-1763.

However, Crucible of War is not an exhaustive treatise on the Seven Years’ War, so the fighting in Europe is merely overviewed, and the effects of the war in France are not explored. Nor is this primarily a “kings and battles” account of the war. Readers looking for such a book should consider reading Parkman or, for more casual readers, Robert Lekie’s A Few Acres of Snow, because Anderson spends a lot of pages wandering (purposefully!) the halls of the British parliament.  For the purely Indian perspective, readers can peruse Jennings’ Empire of Fortune, but the author comes off as bitter and manages to tell the story of the war by all but omitting the war. 

Main thesis
Often incorrectly viewed as a mere precursor to the Revolution, this last of the series of wars between England and France for control of North America was part of the larger Seven Years’ War (arguably the true first world war) and a huge, earth-shaking event in its own right. Anderson argues that any understanding of the Revolution must first begin not in 1763 with the signing of the treaty of Paris, but in 1754 when an inexperienced George Washington inadvertently touched off a world war in the wilds of the Ohio River valley. Unlike most wars fought in Europe over the previous few hundred years, this war wrought tremendous consequences. Without it, we can speculate that we may have never had a Revolution by force, and the French throne would not have fallen (at least when it did), which of course means that there would not have been no Napoleon, etc., etc.

Two empires came to an end in 1763 and the seeds for the end of the third (at least in North America) were sown. France lost her New World possessions while the loose collection of tribes known as the Iroquois Confederacy, which had played a delicate balancing act between France, England and Colonies, lost power, influence and, eventually, everything. And England, of course, would deal with the consequences of empire a decade after the treaty of Paris.

Any brief summary of this book would do it injustice, because Anderson’s dramatis personae is huge, and their adventures—minor and major, minuscule and transformative—can only be appreciated and savored by reading this magnificent book.

Jaw-Dropper
Anderson splits with Parkman – and most American history, for that matter – in declaring that the siege and battle of Quebec in 1759 was not the great, pivotal and decisive battle that history has said it was. Rather, Anderson contends it was a “dubious” battle that was far less decisive than British mastery of the seas, which denied re-supply and re-enforcements to Canada. The fatal showdown between Montcalm and Wolfe—the latter’s death immortalized in a fanciful painting by Benjamin West—was not as crucial to victory as the romantic images of the war has made it out to be.

Point to ponder
Anderson gives skillful explanations behind scalping and the “biological warfare” of smallpox. For example, scalping was a greatly misunderstood action done by native tribes, and reserved more for sick and wounded, not healthy enemy soldiers and warriors.

As for smallpox epidemics, both whites and Indians were to blame. In some cases, the charges are true that whites deliberately gave Indians blankets infected with smallpox, with the predictable devastating results. Sometimes, though, warriors would unwittingly take infected blankets as booty and carry them back to their villages, with similar results. Such was the case with the fall of Forth William Henry in 1757. (Side note: Anderson is largely in agreement with Francis Jennings in his conclusions that the tales of “massacre” following the British surrender of Fort William Henry were greatly exaggerated.)

Another point: Conservatives tend to ridicule the French, especially their modern military prowess (or lack thereof), but their approach to colonization was decidedly different from that of the British. By and large, they left the native tribes alone and even adopted some native customs -- a type of reverse assimilation -- at least in North America. The Indians therefore (largely) preferred the French to the English.

Does the author succeed?
Yes, tremendously so.

Criticism
Anderson’s prose is clean, refreshing and easy to understand. The casual reader will probably get bogged down in the politics, especially the long chapters on the rise and fall of the governments of Pitt, Grenville, etc., but such a reader, if he is truly interested in understanding this period—and understanding why America came to be—is encouraged to read these parts.

It was sometimes a little difficult to keep track of who was who in the British government, and what office was in charge of what; being an American and not as familiar with the British system, perhaps this is more reader failure than author oversight. But perhaps a flow chart listing the offices and how parliament worked in relation to those offices would be useful.

Main takeaway lessons
If you truly want to understand why the Revolution happened, you must start with this war. In its aftermath, the Colonials were quite proud to be British subjects, and assumed that they were Englishmen who happened to live in a colony. But Whitehall (the British Parliament), while happy to have the Colonies as subjects of the crown, suddenly had a far more immense territory to govern (with the absence of France) and wanted to exert better imperial control – and pay for the massive war debt.

This led directly to the Grenville acts, including the Stamp Act, and also the mislabeled “Pontiac’s Rebellion,” which revealed fissures in the empire. However, revolution against the crown was the furthest thing from their minds, and therefore it is not correct to view independence as a foregone conclusion.

No one in 1766 was seriously thinking of revolution or separation from the crown – and that’s the most important thing to keep in mind. Anderson ends his tale in 1766 following both what he correctly calls the most effective Indian rebellion ever and the Stamp Act upheavals; because it seems that for the moment, in 1766, the empire had gotten back on track.

Thus, Anderson argues effectively that the Stamp Act should no longer be thought of as a precursor to Revolution – a cause and effect relationship – but rather as a failed post-war attempt at reform that wound up exacerbating fissures developed during the war.

The disagreements that led to armed rebellion didn’t cross the Rubicon and become full-fledged revolution until George Washington – the man who unwittingly touched off the war two decades earlier – took command of all of the continental militias and armies after the rebels had already killed and wounded 1,400 of His Majesty’s troops at Concord, Lexington and Bunker Hill. And then it took another full year before independence became a reality, at least on paper.

It is a mistake, therefore, to “start the revolution” in 1763 with the treaty of Paris. This period of American history, from 1760 to at least 1766, is best viewed as the post-war period, instead of the pre-war years. But if you start talking about the Revolution in 1763 instead of 1754, “give me liberty or give me death” seems a little shallow against a king who was very mild on the tyrant scale.

Do I recommend this book?
Absolutely! But be prepared for some heavy-duty reading. At 746 pages (plus 74 pages of notes), Crucible of War is a comprehensive read that deserves to be taken seriously.