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...

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.

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....

This lively guide to Quebec history tells the fascinating story of the settlement of the St. Lawrence River Valley over nearly 500 years. But it also tells of the Montreal and Quebec-based explorers and traders who travelled, mapped, and inhabited most of North America, and embrothered the peoples they met. Combining vast research and great story telling, Jacques Lacoursière and Robin Philpot connect everyday life to the events that emerged as historical turning points in the life of a peo...

This sophisticated and masterful political biography of Napoleon Bonaparte, written by a respected French history scholar who has taught courses on Napoleon at the University of Paris, brings new and remarkable analysis to the study of French history, the French Revolution, and modern history’s most famous general and statesman.Since boyhood, Steven Englund has been fascinated by the unique force, personality, and political significance of Napoleon Bonaparte, who, ...

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...

French-Canadian explorers, traders, and soldiers feature prominently in this country's storytelling, but little has been written about their female counterparts. In Along a River, award-winning historian Jan Noel shines a light on the lives of remarkable French-Canadian women — immigrant brides, nuns, tradeswomen, farmers, governors' wives, and even smugglers — during the period between the settlement of the St. Lawrence Lowlands and the Victorian era.Along a River

How the Radical Enlightenment inspired and shaped the French RevolutionHistorians of the French Revolution used to take for granted what was also obvious to its contemporary observers—that the Revolution was shaped by the radical ideas of the Enlightenment. Yet in recent decades, scholars have argued that the Revolution was brought about by social forces, politics, economics, or culture—almost anything but abstract notions like liberty or equality. In Revolutio...

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...

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...

For some historians and biographers, Maximilien Robespierre (1758–94) was a great revolutionary martyr who succeeded in leading the French Republic to safety in the face of overwhelming military odds. For many others, he was the first modern dictator, a fanatic who instigated the murderous Reign of Terror in 1793–94. This masterful biography combines new research into Robespierre's dramatic life with a deep understanding of society and the politics of the French Revolution to arrive at a f...

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...