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Bruce Lenman's hugely ambitious study explores three interacting themes: the growth of England's sprawling colonial empire; its military dimension; and the impact of colonial warfare on national identity. He starts in Ireland, with the renewed assault of English settlers on the Irish Gaeltacht. Under the (Scottish) Stuarts, England then began a dramatic expansion across the North Atlantic. In America, the 'Indian Wars', fought with minimal Crown support, helped forge an independent military capability among the colonists; while, in the West Indies, slave numbers and French intervention forced English settlers into a new dependency on the Crown. In India, the East India Company achieved ascendancy by sepoy armies under British control. These were very different kinds of empire; and a showdown became inevitable. The climactic conflict, the American Revolution, would not only dictate the future shape of colonial expansion, but also decisively reshaped the identities of all the participants.
List of contents
Introduction Give war a chance; 1: The Tudor Crown, the English Nation, and the Heritage of Anglo-Norman Expansionism 1550-1603; 1: Colonial Englishmen face up to the Tudors; 3: The Gaidhealtachd and the colonial enterprise; 4: Feeding frenzy: marginal courtiers and perceived opportunities, 1578-1590; 5: Nadir of statesmanship: the origins of the last Elizabethan colonial war; 6: The bankruptcy of Elizabethan imperialism and the fatal fracturing of the Englishry; 2: Three-Kingdom Monarchy and Empire 1603-1688; 7: Reluctant warriors: James I, Charles I, appeasement and the aborting of a three-kingdom overseas empire; 8: No enthusiasts for empire: the English East India Company and the struggle for maritime trade in seventeenth-century Asia to 1689; 9: War in the New English marchlands in North America 1607-1676; 10: The clash of European states and the rise of the imperial factor in the Caribbean and North America; 11: Conclusion The fracturing of the Englishry, the marginality of colonial enterprise, and the erratic impact of war
About the author
Bruce Lenman is Professor of Modern History at the University of St. Andrews. He has also written Britain's Colonial Wars, 1688 - 1783.
Summary
The first of two volumes in Bruce Lenman's hugely ambitious study explores three interacting themes: the growth of England's sprawling colonial empire; its military dimension; and the impact of colonial warfare on national identity.
