Customer Reviews

Plassey 1757: Clive of India's Finest Hour (Campaign)

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This book lacks the excitement and insights that other ones showed in the campaign series. Perhaps it's because of the rather unspectacular historical engagement from both armies. The book is a straightforward and is a fairly dry account of the events leading up to the battle. The illustrations are not as good as some other ones in the series. The lack of photographs of the battlefields and geographical features of East India also contributes to the poor showing of the book.

THis book is part of the Praeger series (in turn based on the Osprey series) of campaign books. Books in this series normally provide good succint histories of the campaigns and battles they cover. Unfortunately this one does not.

Books in the series start out some perspective as to the campaign or battle covered. They provide context as how the campaign/battle fit into the war parties' strategic and operational aims. Unfortunately this book provides no such discussion. The Seven Years War is barely even mentioned. Hence the reader has no idea as to how or why this campaign/battle fit into the bigger picture.

Books in this series also provide sectioins regarding the commanders involved, forces and their dispostions before the battle and pre-battle strategies. This book provides almost nothing regarding these.

The books also provide, most importantly, a short succinct history as to how the battle unfolded. This book provides a very confused account instead. Also, too much time is spent on ancillary issues such as the French side's allies traitorous generals. Though this is of importance, it should not have 2-3 pages dedicated to it. The book also does not provide a discussion of the implications of the battle in either the strategic context of the Seven Years war or even of the French and English positions in India for that matter.

Last but not least the book is poorly illustrated. Few accurate etchings, etc. are provided of the time. There are no color plates either of equipment or troops (very unusual for an Opsrey Campaign/Battle series book).