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24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A splendid introduction to grand history, October 22, 2001
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.
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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
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.
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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
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.
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