Battle for Empire
Tom Pocock
272 pages including index
published in 1998
It was described by Winston Churchill as the very first world war, with war raging between France and Britain for supremacy not just in Europe, but worldwide. Fighting between the two sides took place in Europe, North America and the Caribbean, India and even the Philippines. It was the Seven Years’ War. And even though it was one of the wars that is at the root of the modern world, according to Tom Pocock, it’s largely a forgotten war, especially those parts of the war that took place outside Europe. To rectify this Pocock wrote this book, Battle for Empire; he may have had somewhat of an ulterior motive, as one of his ancestors, vice-admiral Sir George Pocock, was one of the major participants in these events…
This then is not a history of the Seven Years’ War as a whole, but strictly the story of several of the major campaigns in the war outside Europe: the battles between Britain and France in India, the English invasion of Quebec and New France in America, as well as the expeditions against Spanish held Havanna and Manilla. Together they show how wide the war raged and how bold the British waged it. Little context is given to the wider war in which these campaigns took place, even less of the reasons for the war.
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