A History of Britain, Vol. 2: The Wars of the British, 1603-1776 [Hardcover]

Simon Schama (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 17, 2001

Inside these pages lies the bloody epic of liberty, the British Iliad.

The second volume of Simon Schama's A History of Britain brings the histories of Britain's civil wars -- full of blighted idealism, shocking carnage, and unexpected outcomes -- startlingly to life. These conflicts were fought unsparingly between the nations of the islands -- Ireland, England, and Scotland -- and between parliament and the crown. Shattering the illusion of a "united kingdom," they cost hundreds of thousands of lives: a greater proportion of the population than died in the First World War.

When religious passion gave way to the equally consuming passion for profits, it became possible for the pieces of Britain to come together as the spectacularly successful business enterprise of "Britannia Incorporated." And in a few generations that business state expanded in a dizzying process that transformed what had been an obscure, off-shore footnote to Europe's great powers into the main event -- the most powerful empire in the world.

Yet somehow, it was the "wrong empire." The British considered it a bastion of liberty, yet it was based on military force and the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Africans. In America, the emptiness of British claims to protect "freedom" was thrown back into the teeth of colonial governors and redcoat soldiers, while the likes of Sam Adams and George Washington inherited the mantle of Cromwell.

Simon Schama grippingly evokes the horror of the battle, famine, and plague; the flames of burning cities; the pathos of broken families, with fathers and sons forced to choose opposing sides. But he also captures the intimacies of palace and parliament and the seductions of profit and pleasure. Geniuses like John Milton, Thomas Hobbes, and Benjamin Franklin stalk vividly through his pages, but so do Scottish clansmen, women pamphleteers, and literate, eloquent African slaves like Olaudah Equiano.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The beginning of the 17th century promised that England's golden age would long outlast its Elizabethan namesake. Within a few years, that promise would end in civil war, political unrest, and international conflict, a period of strife that would last for two centuries, but produce the modern British nation. In this swiftly moving narrative, the second installment in a three- volume companion to the BBC/History Channel television series, Simon Schama examines key events that would utterly change British life: the collapse of monarchy and republic, the establishment of the beginnings of empire, and the ever-wider division between court and country. The wars that accompanied these turns of fortune were, Schama writes, "eminently unpredictable, improbable, and avoidable." With them came the Glorious Revolution, the bloody suppression of religious dissent, the conquest of neighboring kingdoms, and the wide-scale movement of large populations from one place to another--including the deliberate introduction of nearly 100,000 Scots, Welsh, and English settlers in Ireland, which, Schama writes, "utterly dwarfed the related 'planting' on the Atlantic seaboard of North America." Along the way, Schama considers actors major and minor in this tumultuous play, from the unlucky king Charles I to Oliver Cromwell (who "lacked the one essential characteristic for true dictatorship: a hunger to accumulate power purely for its own sake"), from the writer Daniel Defoe to the pragmatic politician Sir Robert Walpole, from William Pitt to the African slaves who peopled Britain's American colonies.

Though understandably rushed and sometimes unfocused, Schama's narrative ably captures Britain's transformation from island outpost to global power. -- Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly

This second in a series of three volumes, following the excellent A History of England: At the Edge of the World 3500 B.C.-1603 A.D., is an elegantly written, consistently engaging account of a seminal period in British history, penned by one of today's finest historians. Schama begins with the Stuart dynasty, which unified the crowns of Scotland and England in 1603 and as a result met its downfall. Schama contends that the concept of Great Britain caused constant upheaval for England: "The trouble was Calvinist Scotland and Catholic Ireland, and their deep religious incompatibility with Stuart England." When Charles I attempted to impose a unified religious establishment on Scotland, a firestorm ensued. In 1638, Scottish Calvinists signed a "National Covenant" and claimed that, by interfering with Scottish religion, Charles I had broken his contract, and Scotland claimed the right to overthrow him. A furious Charles called Parliament to raise military funds, but it denied his request. Instead, it began making demands for political, legal and religious rights. Charles's stubborn refusal to compromise triggered a civil war that resulted in his beheading. Parliament finally achieved its power-sharing demands in 1688-1689, when the Stuarts were toppled and an arrangement was reached with King William and Queen Mary. The year 1776, Schama points out, brought the ultimate irony: the American colonists demanded the same hard-earned liberties for which their British forefathers had fought the Stuarts. George III would prove every bit as obstreperous as Charles I. Columbia University historian Schama (The Embarrassment of Riches, etc.) is to be congratulated for this magisterial, delightfully accessible and important book. 150 color photos, 10 color maps not seen by PW. (Oct.)Forecast: As with the first volume, this book is issued simultaneously with the airing of a History Channel companion series. Schama's excellent reputation plus the book's rich illustrations make it a good gift book that should sell steadily through its 50,000 first printing.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 544 pages
• Publisher: Miramax (October 17, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786867523
• ISBN-13: 978-0786867523
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.7 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #436,185 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A splendid introduction to grand history, October 22, 2001

By 

David J. Loftus (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A History of Britain, Vol. 2: The Wars of the British, 1603-1776 (Hardcover)

The second volume of Schama's book tie-in to the BBC and History Channel TV series takes Britain from the death of Elizabeth I (and the ascendancy of James I) to the end of the American Revolution and the settling of a British regime in the Indian subcontinent.

It gives more space to the tumultuous middle of the 17th century (350 of the 524 pages) -- with its see-sawing Catholic and Protestant regimes, the civil wars, and Restoration -- than the 18th century.

Perhaps what strikes one most about the entire period is how bloody gruesome the English ruling classes and armies once treated their own people as well as the Scots and Irish -- as badly as any 21st century religious dictatorship in Africa or Asia. Thousands were massacred after battles as well as during them; several of the Guy Fawkes gunpowder plotters had their hearts cut out while still alive.

Two years after his death and embalming, Cromwell's body was exhumed and publicly hanged. And not just humans suffered: When yet another wave of the plague struck London in 1665, and dog and cats were believed to be the cause, 40,000 dogs and perhaps 200,000 cats were slaughtered. The slave trade and the brutal labor conditions on a West Indian sugar plantation are vividly depicted.

(Bracing though all of this may be, it's encouraging to realize that such atrocities have ceased to occur within the UK in the past century and a half, just as it seems unlikely the Germans and French will ever again be at each other's throats, so maybe the species is making slow but inexorable progress toward the light. And what great movies all this history would make, and in some cases HAS made!)

Though the life of common folk gets somewhat short shrift, Schama does note significant developments along the way: the arrival of condoms, the growth of print news media, English society as seen through the eyes of a slave named Olaudah Equiano.

It is helpful to be reminded that while we Yanks tend to think of the "French and Indian War" as a quaint prelude to our Revolution (whose launching is stirringly related by Schama, who though a born Brit, spent a few years in Boston and now teaches at Columbia), the Seven Years War was actually a sort of "world war" between England and France for future dominance of the globe: battles took place in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, even West Africa and India, while Major George Washington was dashing about New England under Braddock's command.

Volume 2 regrettably has fewer maps than Volume 1 -- I would have appreciated a little more topographical help with the mid 17th century civil wars and Scottish campaigns -- and it also shows a few signs of having been rushed to print (e.g., "perpeptuated" on p. 99).

But Schama's smooth and engaging narrative style makes a fine introduction to English history for the less knowledgeable general reader. (For example, he wishes Jane Austen had been around to chronicle the vicious personal politics of India's administrators, and drily notes the repeated automatic lies that filled British propaganda about its enemies, decade after decade: "impaled babies, eviscerated pregnant mothers, roughed-up grandpas -- the usual thing....")

I look forward with eagerness to the next volume in the series.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Splendid Introduction To The First British Empire, December 20, 2001

By 

John Kwok (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A History of Britain, Vol. 2: The Wars of the British, 1603-1776 (Hardcover)

Simon Schama's second volume in his ongoing project with BBC-TV on the history of Great Britain is another splendid introduction to British history. Here he chronicles the rapid rise of Great Britain's first empire, primarily in North America, and the bloody wars fought over its creation and subsequent demise. Although this is an introduction to 17th and 18th Century British history on a grand scale, it does manage to clear a few cobwebs and misconceptions, most notably, noting whom the intended victims were during Oliver Cromwell's savage campaign against Stuart loyalist forces in Ireland. Much to my amazement, the native Catholic Irish suffered lightly from Cromwell's butchery; only later, during James II's unsuccesful attempt to hold onto his crown, would Irish Catholics become victims of brutal warfare waged by Protestant forces. Most of the book is devoted to the English Civil War and the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688/1689, yet Schama devotes considerable time to the two major 18th Century conflicts whose origins were in North America; the Seven Years War (In North America known as the "French and Indian War") and, of course, the American Revolution. The final chapter anticipates the rise of the second British Empire with an overview of British efforts in regulating, eventually dominating, trade in India.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book -- let me mention some of its other qualities too, June 8, 2002

By 

Larry Newman (DALLAS, TX United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A History of Britain, Vol. 2: The Wars of the British, 1603-1776 (Hardcover)

I certainly concur with the previous reviews. But why is this book such a page-turner, besides the author being such a great narrator? I'll add some things not mentioned so far.

Well, he introduces the names well; he doesn't just "drop" them.

He writes indicating how the choices of the participants in the events mattered; he's not a historicist or inevitablist.

When he offers value judgments, they are not a priori, at the service of some pet theory of his own devising by which he judges the history. (But he gently pokes fun at Macaulay's Victorian grid, and the "imperialist" historians, doesn't he?)

For example, he contrasts the pursuit of the "right empire" and the "wrong empire" -- the chief value judgment of the book. In breathtakingly great narrative fashion he shows how the American colonies took the principles of liberty that they learned from the very previous period of British history, and went with them, while the Brits basically ignored them in setting up control over India. But he doesn't subject you to a long moralism about it. He simply mentions the crucial decisions and how momentous they would turn out to be. He even contrasts that with how the decisions seemed to those who made them at the time. (The momentous Stamp Act! The Tea Tax! and many other examples....)

The only reason you might not like this book is if you're looking for a particular slant and only things that "prove" your slant. For example, if you're looking for a history that whitewashes the Church of England, or the various other religious views, you won't get that. (I find a slight, slight anti-Calvinism in his descriptions a couple places myself. Not entrenched, but perceptible. I even wrote him about it!)

Similarly, if you're looking for a uniformly negative view of the Whig or the Tory sides of things, you won't get that. He seems very uninterested in griding his own axe.

I certainly like how he points out the beginnings of things: the beginnings of a daily-informed electorate; the beginnings of "shopping"; (an earlier review mentioned the tiny little reference to the beginnings of condoms); the beginnings of scientific explanation.

I think you'll love this book, and it will get you proud(er) of the love of history.