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How did an ambitious British army officer advance his career in mid–eighteenth–century North America? What was the nature of political opportunism in an imperial system encompassing an old world and a new? This study examines the career of an Anglo–Irish–Acadian army officer, treating in considerable detail the network of old-world connections and patrons which at times facilitated his advancement. John Bradstreet was born in Nova Scotia and died in New York. He was a major participant in colonial North American military events ranging from the capture of Louisbourg in 1745 to the British campaign against Pontiac in 1764. Early in his career he became lieutenant–governor of St. John’s, Newfoundland, and eventually rose to the rank of major–general in the British army, while linking his military performance to a relentless pursuit of profit and preferment. He was a man consistently on the periphery of both English and American societies; yet his career reveals a great deal about the mid–eighteenth–century trans–Atlantic world and about the dilemma of proponents of Empire who were viewed with increasing suspicion in both mother country and colonies. The author draws upon British, American, and Canadian archival sources, taking advantage of Bradstreet’s prolific correspondence to support and develop his narrative.
First published in 1996, this encyclopedia is a comprehensive reference resource that pulls together a vast amount of material on a rich historical era, presenting it in a balanced way that offers hard-to-find facts and detailed information. The volume was the first encyclopedic account of the United States' colonial military experience. It features 650 essays by more than 130 historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, geographers, and other scholarly experts on a variety of topics that cover all of colonial America's diverse peoples. In addition to wars, battles, and treaties, analytical essays explore the diplomatic and military history of over 50 Native American groups, as well as Dutch, English, French, Spanish, and Swiss colonies. It's the first source to consult for the political activities of an Indian nation, the details about the disposition of forces in a battle, or the significance of a fort to its size, location, and strength. In addition to its reference capabilities, the book's detailed material has been, and will continue to be highly useful to students as a supplementary text and as a handy source for reporters and papers.
History would have been different if not for the events of 1759. It was the fourth year of the Seven Years', or the French-and-Indian, War, and crucial victories against the French in the first truly global conflict laid the foundations of British supremacy throughout the world for the next hundred years. The defeat of the French not only paved the way for the global hegemony of the English language but also made the emergence of the United States possible. Guiding us through England's often extremely narrow victories in India, North America, and the Caribbean, McLynn controversially suggests that the birth of the British Empire was more a result of luck than of rigorous planning. McLynn includes anecdotes of the intellectual and cultural leaders of the day--Swedenborg, Hume, Voltaire--and sources ranging from the Vatican archives to oral histories of Native Americans.--From publisher description.
Among the many upheavals in North America caused by the French and Indian War was a commonplace practice that affected the lives of thousands of men, women, and children: being taken captive by rival forces. Most previous studies of captivity in early America are content to generalize from a small selection of sources, often centuries apart. In Setting All the Captives Free, Ian Steele presents, from a mountain of data, the differences rather than generalities as well as how these differences show the variety of circumstances that affected captives’ experiences. The product of a herculean effort to identify and analyze the captives taken on the Allegheny frontier during the era of the French and Indian War, Setting All the Captives Free is the most complete study of this topic. Steele explores genuine, doctored, and fictitious accounts in an innovative challenge to many prevailing assumptions and arguments, revealing that Indians demonstrated humanity and compassion by continuing to take numerous captives when their opponents took none, by adopting and converting captives into kin during the war, and by returning captives even though doing so was a humiliating act that betrayed their societies' values. A fascinating and comprehensive work by an acclaimed scholar, Setting All the Captives Free takes the study of the French and Indian War in America to an exciting new level.
"Altogether superb: an accessible, fluent account that advances scholarship while building a worthy memorial to the victims of two and a half centuries past." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) In 1755, New England troops embarked on a "great and noble scheme" to expel 18,000 French-speaking Acadians ("the neutral French") from Nova Scotia, killing thousands, separating innumerable families, and driving many into forests where they waged a desperate guerrilla resistance. The right of neutrality; to live in peace from the imperial wars waged between France and England; had been one of the founding values of Acadia; its settlers traded and intermarried freely with native Mikmaq Indians and English Protestants alike. But the Acadians' refusal to swear unconditional allegiance to the British Crown in the mid-eighteenth century gave New Englanders, who had long coveted Nova Scotia's fertile farmland, pretense enough to launch a campaign of ethnic cleansing on a massive scale. John Mack Faragher draws on original research to weave 150 years of history into a gripping narrative of both the civilization of Acadia and the British plot to destroy it.
On the morning of August 9, 1757, British and colonial officers defending the besieged Fort William Henry surrendered to French forces, accepting the generous "parole of honor" offered by General Montcalm. As the column of British and colonials marched with their families and servants to Fort Edward some miles south, they were set upon by the Indian allies of the French. The resulting "massacre," thought to be one of the bloodiest days of the French and Indian War, became forever ingrained in American myth by James Fenimore Cooper's classic novel The Last of the Mohicans. In Betrayals, historian Ian K. Steele gives us the true story behind Cooper's famous book, bringing to life men such as British commander of Fort William Henry George Monro, English General Webb, his French counterpart Montcalm, and the wild frontier world of Natty Bumppo. The Battle of Lake George and the building of the fort marked the return of European military involvement in intercolonial wars, producing an explosive mixture of the contending martial values of Indians, colonials, and European regulars. The Americans and British who were attacked after surrendering, as well as French officers and their Indian allies (the latter enraged by the small amount of English booty allowed them by the French), all felt deeply betrayed. Contemporary accounts of the victims--whose identities Steele has carefully reconstructed from newly discovered sources--helped to create a powerful, racist American folk memory that still resonates today. Survivors included men and women who were adopted into Indian tribes, sold to Canadians in a well-established white servant trade, or jailed in Canada or France as prisoners of war. Explaining the motives for the most notorious massacre of the colonial period, Steele offers a gripping tale of a fledgling America, one which places the tragic events of the Seven Years' War in a fresh historical context. Anyone interested in the fact behind the fiction will find it fascinating reading.
By 1756 the wilderness war for control of North America that erupted two years earlier between France and England had expanded into a global struggle among all of Europe's Great Powers. Its land and sea battles raged across the North American continent, engulfed Europe and India, and stretched from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, Indian, and Pacific waters. The new conflict, now commonly known as the Seven Years' War of 1756-1763, was a direct continuation of the last French and Indian War. This study explores the North American campaigns in relation to events elsewhere in the world, from the ministries of Whitehall and Versailles to the land and sea battles in Europe, Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean. Few wars have had a more decisive effect on international relations and national development. The French and Indian War resulted in France's expulsion from almost all of the Western Hemisphere, except for some tiny islands in the Caribbean and St. Lawrence. Britain emerged as the world's dominant sea power and would remain so for two centuries. Finally, within a generation or two the vast debts incurred by Whitehall and Versailles in waging this war would help to stimulate revolutions in America and France that would forever change world history.
This volume brings together eight essays that address the result of a research project involving a group of international scholars. It explores a little-discussed, yet interesting phenomenon in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico region – how military engineers reshaped the physical landscape for imperial reasons and, in doing so, laid the foundations for broader colonial development. Moreover, this transnational scenario reveals how military construction reached beyond cross-borders themes and histories from the age of imperialism. As such, this book provides valuable insights into the role of military engineers in the process of articulating new American countries from the late 18th to 19th century. While this time period is full of international and local conflicts, it remains essential for understanding the region’s history – from the Gulf of Mexico to the Caribbean Sea – and even its current situation. Due to independence movements and Spain’s Decree of Free Trade (1778), the region’s connection with Europe changed dramatically. This affected the entire American continent, but had a particularly peculiar in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. For this reason, this volume underlines the key role of military engineers on other fields, from railroad design to environmental intervention, through cartographical works, and in diplomacy, all the while overcoming the traditional perspective of military engineers as being only builders of structures for war.
The Far Reaches of Empire chronicles the half century of Anglo-American efforts to establish dominion in Nova Scotia, an important French foothold in the New World. John Grenier examines the conflict of cultures and peoples in the colonial Northeast through the lens of military history as he tells how Britons and Yankees waged a tremendously efficient counterinsurgency that ultimately crushed every remnant of Acadian, Indian, and French resistance in Nova Scotia. The author demonstrates the importance of warfare in the Anglo-French competition for North America, showing especially how Anglo-Americans used brutal but effective measures to wrest control of Nova Scotia from French and Indian enemies who were no less ruthless. He explores the influence of Abenakis, Maliseets, and Mi’kmaq in shaping the region’s history, revealing them to be more than the supposed pawns of outsiders; and he describes the machinations of French officials, military officers, and Catholic priests in stirring up resistance. Arguing that the Acadians were not merely helpless victims of ethnic cleansing, Grenier shows that individual actions and larger forces of history influenced the decision to remove them. The Far Reaches of Empire illuminates the primacy of war in establishing British supremacy in northeastern North America.