To Lose an Empire: British Strategy and Foreign Policy, 1758-90

Bringing strategy, foreign policy, domestic and imperial politics together, this book challenges the conventional understanding as to why the British Empire, at perhaps the height of its power, lost control of its American colonies. Critiquing the traditional emphasis on the value of alliance during the Seven Years’ War, and the consequences of British isolation during the War of American Independence, Jeremy Black shows that this rests on a misleading understanding of the relationship between policy and strategy.

Encompassing both the Seven Years’ War and the American War of Independence and grounded in archival research, this book considers a violent and contentious period which was crucial to the making of modern Britain and its role in the wider world. Offering a reinterpretation of British strategy and foreign policy throughout this time, To Lose an Empire interweaves British domestic policy with diplomatic and colonial developments to show the impact this period and its events had on British strategy and foreign policy for years to come.