To Lose an Empire: British Strategy and Foreign Policy, 1758–90

✍ Scribed by Jeremy Black

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 209
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Bringing strategy, foreign policy, domestic and imperial politics together, this book challenges the conventional approach to why British rose to such power and then lost America within a matter of decades. Critiquing the traditional emphasis on the value of alliance during the Seven Years’ War, and the consequences of British isolation during the War of American Independence, Jeremy Black shows that this rests on a misleading understanding of the relationship between policy and strategy.
Encompassing both the Seven Years’ War and the American War of Independence and grounded in archival research, this book considers a violent and contentious period which was crucial to the making of modern Britain and its role in the wider world. Offering a reinterpretation of British strategy and foreign policy throughout this time, To Lose an Empire interweaves British domestic policy with diplomatic and colonial developments to show the impact this period and its events had on British strategy and foreign policy for years to come.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover page
Halftitle page
Title page
Copyright page
Epigraph
CONTENTS
PREFACE
ABBREVIATIONS
Introduction
CHAPTER ONE The Means of Policy
The Crown
Ministers
Parliament
Diplomats
Conclusions
CHAPTER TWO The Context of Debate
CHAPTER THREE To Win America, 1758–60
CHAPTER FOUR Winning a Peace, 1761–3
CHAPTER FIVE A Post-war Order? 1763–70
CHAPTER SIX Muddling Through? 1771–4
CHAPTER SEVEN Strategies Under Pressure, 1775–8
CHAPTER EIGHT Strategies Collapse, 1778–82
CHAPTER NINE Picking up the Pieces, 1783–90
CHAPTER TEN Conclusions
SELECTED FURTHER READING
INDEX