Showcasing French participation in the Seven Years' War and the American Revolution, this book shows the French army at the heart of revolutionary, social, and cultural change. Osman argues that efforts to transform the French army into a citizen army before 1789 prompted and helped shape the French Revolution.

Europe’s crucial contribution to the achievement of American independence.American independence would not have been achieved without diplomatic, financial, and military support from Europe. And without recognition from powerful European nations, the young country would never have assumed an independent status "amongst the powers of the earth." This collection of essays not only offers new glimpses into the ways in which various European powers and actors enabled American patriots t...

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “richly imagined biography” (The New York Times Book Review) of General Alex Dumas, who rose from slavery to command vast armies in the French Revolutionary Wars—and whose exploits were immortalized in his son’s novels The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers“Fascinating [and] entertaining.”—The Wall Street Journal“Remarkable....

A strinking account of the impact of the French Revolution in Paris, across the French countryside, and around the globeThe French Revolution has fascinated, perplexed, and inspired for more than two centuries. It was a seismic event that radically transformed France and launched shock waves across the world. In this provocative new history, Peter McPhee draws on a lifetime's study of eighteenth-century France and Europe to create an entirely fresh account of the w...

Late in 1755, an army of British regulars and Massachusetts volunteers completed one of the cruelest, most successful military campaigns in North American history, capturing and deporting seven thousand French-speaking Catholic Acadians from the province of Nova Scotia, and chasing an equal number into the wilderness of eastern Canada. Thousands of Acadians endured three decades of forced migrations and failed settlements that shuttled them to the coasts of South America, the plantations o...

From a pre-eminent Yale historian comes the first popular history of the 1871 Paris Commune, a seminal episode in modern European history.The Paris Commune lasted for only 64 days in 1871, but during that short time it gave rise to some of the grandest political dreams of the nineteenth century -- before culminating in horrific violence.Following the disastrous French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, hungry and politically disenchanted Parisians took up a...

The British victory on the Plains of Abraham in September 1759 and the subsequent Conquest of Canada were undoubtedly significant geopolitical events, but their nature and implications continue to be debated. Revisiting 1759 provides a fresh historical reappraisal of the Conquest and its aftermath using new approaches drawn from military, imperial, social, and Aboriginal history.This cohesive collection investigates many of the most hotly contested questions surrounding th...

Internationally renowned as the greatest authority on the French Revolution, Georges Lefebvre combined impeccable scholarship with a lively writing style. His masterly overview of the history of the French Revolution has taken its rightful place as the definitive account. A vivid narrative of events in France and across Europe is combined with acute insights into the underlying forces that created the dynamics of the revolution, as well as the personalities responsible for day-to-day decis...

The French and Indian War was the world’s first truly global conflict. When the French lost to the British in 1763, they lost their North American empire along with most of their colonies in the Caribbean, India, and West Africa. In The French and Indian War and the Conquest of New France, the only comprehensive account from the French perspective, William R. Nester explains how and why the French were defeated. He explores the fascinating personalities and epic events that shaped...

The French Revolution in Global Perspective illuminates the dense connections among the cultural, social, and economic aspects of the French Revolution, revealing how new political forms—at once democratic and imperial, anticolonial and centralizing—were generated in and through continual transnational exchanges and dialogues.Believe iSituating the French Revolution in the context of early modern globalization for the first time, t...

Jean-Paul Marat’s role in the French Revolution has long been a matter of controversy among historians. Often he is portrayed as a violent, sociopathic demagogue. This biography challenges that interpretation and argues that without Marat’s contributions as an agitator, tactician, and strategist, the pivotal social transformation that the revolution accomplished would not have occurred.Clifford D. Conner argues that what was unique about Marat - setting him apart from all other maj...