The Battle for Empire: The Very First World War, 1756-63 [Hardcover]

Tom Pocock correctly identifies the Seven Years War (1756-63) as "The First World War" and gives a very readable account of how Britain waged it outside Continental Europe. The focus is however purely on this aspect and, as such, the campaigns on the European Continent, including the spectacular role played by Prussia, are excluded. The sheer geographic scale and the vaunting ambition of British policies are however well conveyed as well as the brilliant strategies underlying the first war to be fought with truly global objectives. As well as the better-known campaigns such as "The French-Indian War" in North America, Clives's amazing conquests in India and Byng's disastrous manoeuvres off Minorca (that led to his execution by firing squad "to encourage the others"), there are fascinating accounts of less familiar undertakings such as the operations of the author's own kinsman in the Indian Ocean and the captures of Manila and Havana by British expeditionary forces. The Havana operation, which finally succeeded at a horrendous cost in deaths from disease as well as military action, is an epic that would merit a book in its own right. Though satisfying as far as it goes, once feels that the author missed an opportunity in "Battle for Empire" in not expanding the scope to cover the whole war, on all fronts. There is a gap in the market for a readable single-volume narrative history of the war, ideally written with the easy style, lively depiction of personalities and colourful anecdotes which Mr.Pocock provides in this one.

Tom Pocock, whose biographies of Nelson are also very much worth your time, has written a wonderful short history of the Seven Years War, which he is correct in referring to as the first truly world war, and as the war that set Britain on its road to empire. Pocock has a real talent for vividly depicting people in a chapter or two, including the unfortunate Admiral Byng (shot to "encourage the others" as Voltaire wryly observed), Wolfe, and Clive. Very, very much worth reading; the Seven Years War (which has been consistently reduced to the status of a minor squabble in American history books under the misnomer of the "French and Indian War") has been almost forgotten but its effect on the history of the late 18th and the 19th centuries cannot be overestimated.

Pocock's book is a rather episodic narrative of the main events of the Seven Years' War outside Europe. That war is worth studying, because it shaped the world for a long time to come. In Europe, the Prussians served notice of an intention that they, not the Austrians, should one day be the leaders of united Germany; overseas Britain began the process of 'painting the map red' that (despite occasional setbacks like the loss of the Revolting Colonies) continued until the early 20th century and has left enduring landmarks (the modern states of India and Canada, for starters). It marks the emergence of Britain as the naval superpower, a position it maintained until the 1920s. As another reviewer has said, Pocock's big weakness is that he ignores the European side of the war. Even though the British were able to conduct an overseas strategy with minimum reference to what was going on in Germany, the same wasn't true for the French, and Britain's success undoubtedly owed much to the indefatigable Frederick the Great of Prussia tying down so many French troops.

When assessing the quality of (allegedly) factual books, I'm always discouraged to find errors on matters that I'm able to check personally; even if minor, they throw doubt on all the stuff I don't know and wish to be informed about. Unfortunately Tom Pocock commits such an error (unforced at that) on his very first page, when he makes Captain Augustus Hervey the son and heir of the second Earl of Bristol. Hervey's father never succeeded to the title, Hervey himself was a younger son (the second Earl was his elder brother) with no certain expectations of inheritance, and heirs to major titles (unless near-bankrupt like the Cochrane Earls of Dundonald) rarely went into the armed forces (Earl Percy in the War of American Independence, heir to the great and rich house of Northumberland, is a conspicuous exception). The real crime is not this somewhat peripheral error, but the fact that Pocock claims (in his bibliography) to have read two works - NAM Rodger's 'The Wooden World' and David Erskine's edition of Hervey's 'Journal' - that between them very clearly state both the principles involved and the details of the Hervey family. When an author ignores his own cited sources on simple matters of fact, the reader must be wary. Maybe Pocock's start as a journalist has something to do with it.

Nevertheless, this is a book worth reading, if only because of the detail it gives for events that are often confined to a brief mention or a footnote in more general histories. Pocock starts with the loss of Minorca and the consequent execution of Admiral George Byng (which is where Byng's service follower Hervey gets into the picture), and follows it with the campaigns in Bengal and the Indian Ocean (where Pocock's ancestor Admiral Pocock fought a long attritional struggle against the French commander d'Ache), North America (where the Ticonderoga fiasco is described in all its horror, and the taking of Quebec is shown to be much more touch-and-go than given in imperial hagiography), Cuba (where Admiral Pocock and Augustus Hervey - now also an Admiral - surface again) and finally the most far-flung and improbable of them all, the capture of Manila. He gives many fascinating details (especially for the taking of Havana) that were new to me; the descent on the windward coast of Cuba via the intricate Old Bahama Channel is a justly celebrated feat of military navigation, but the hardships and fearful losses from disease during the siege are less familiar.