A History of Britain Volume 2: The British Wars 1603 - 1776: British Wars, 1603-1776 Vol 2

Simon Schama CBE

ISBN 10: 0563537477 / ISBN 13: 9780563537472

Published by BBC Books 04/10/2001, 2001

About this Item

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: A History of Britain Volume 2: The British Wars 1603 - 1776: British Wars, 1603-1776 Vol 2
• Publisher: BBC Books 04/10/2001
• Publication Date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0563537477
• ISBN 13: 9780563537472
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

To understand what Britain has become it is necessary to know what it has been. The second volume in this history takes the story of Britain from the Civil War to the Enlightenment. Each chapter focuses on a major theme.

From the Back Cover

"Great Britain? What was that?" asks Simon Schama at the start of this, the second book of his epic three-volume journey into Britain's past. The answer emerges in The British Wars, a compelling chronicle of the changes that transformed every strand and strata of British life, faith and thought from 1603 to 1776. Travelling up and down the country and across three continents, Schama explores the forces that tore Britain apart during two centuries of dynamic change--transforming outlooks, allegiances and boundaries.

"The British wars began on the morning of July 23 1637, and the first missiles launched were stools. They flew down the nave of St Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh and their targets were the Dean and the Bishop..." The first round of the wars had been fired, and fired on grounds of faith. Over the next 200 years, other battles would rage on other battlegrounds--both at home and abroad, on sea and on land, up and down the length of burgeoning Britain, across Europe, America, and India. Most would be wars of faith--waged on wide-ranging grounds of political or religious conviction--between Republicans and Royalists, Catholics and Protestants, Tories and Whigs, colonialists and natives. The struggle to pull Britain together at first succeeded only in tearing our nations further apart. But as wars of religious passions gave way to campaigns for profit, the British people did come together in the imperial enterprise of "Britannia Incorporated". The story of that great alteration is a story of revolution and reaction, inspiration and disenchantment, of progress and catastrophe; of reckless acts of suicidal courage, as when Wolfe at Quebec urged his troops on with one arm shattered and bullets tearing through his chest; and of grim atrocity, such as the cold-blooded slaughters at Drogheda.

It is a story brought vividly, sometimes disturbingly, to life by Schama's evocative narrative, filled with ordinary and extraordinary people. Here are the great and gifted--Oliver Cromwell and Christopher Wren. But here, too, are the less known, though no less extraordinary, such as Olaudah Equiano, an African enslaved from childhood, who learnt to write, and wrote an unforgettable tale.

"Great Britain? What was that?" Whatever it was, it was a place of dynamic and dramatic change, the shifting patterns of which are skilfully captured on Schama's rich and teeming tapestry of The British Wars.