John Forbes: Scotland, Flanders and the Seven Years' War, 1707-1759

John Oliphant is Head of History at Cambridge Tutors College, UK. He is author of Peace and War on the Anglo-Cherokee Frontier 1756-1763 (2001) and a contributor to The Seven Years’ War: Global Views (2012).

Oliphant (Open Univ., UK) presents the first-ever full-length biographical study of an often overlooked British Army general, whose 1758 campaign against French Fort Duquesne played a pivotal role in transferring the trans-Appalachian region to the British Empire after 1763. Forbes traversed multiple locations in the 18th-century North Atlantic world, and Oliphant's scrupulous research and crisp writing offer clear insights into the variety of experiences, opportunities, and problems of British military officers entering this novel sphere of human interactions, violent or otherwise. Generously illustrated with seven maps, three figures, and four battle plans, the book situates Forbes's career in the broader context of the 18th-century British fiscal-military state and balances his achievements with the harrowing details of the physical ailments that bedeviled him throughout the latter years of his career. In contending that, in the aftermath of the French abandonment of Fort Duquesne, Forbes and Colonel Henry Bouquet dedicated themselves to honoring the terms of the settlement boundary negotiated at the Treaty of Easton in 1758, Oliphant sheds important new light on alternative possibilities that might have alleviated the subsequent outbreak of violence after these officers passed from the American scene. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

• Introduction: A death in Philadelphia 1. 'Merry pintle Cout' 1707-1729 2. Grey Dragoon 1729-17393. Rumours of wars 1739-1742 4. Dettingen 1742-1744 5. 'in which wee fail'd: Flanders and the battle of Fontenoy 1744-1745 6. The dancers of Breda 1746-1748 7. 'I know the other to be a mad sort of Fool' 1748-1757 8. The madness of Lord Charles Hay 1757 9. ‘am now a downright Leopard’ 1757-1758 10. Rogues and True Friends 1758 11. Crossing Laurel Hill 175812. The fall of Fort Duquesne 175813. 'brave, without Ostentation’Bibliography Index