Edited by Nicholas Canny This volume covers the British Empire when it was an English Empire and a pretty ropy one at that. Twenty-one essays by notable historians (NAM Rodger and Jonathan Israel for example) cover a variety of topics from Ireland to the East Indies. There are far more articles on the American colonies than their importance might suggest (as against one each only on the Caribbean, African and Asian factories and plantations). However, the difference between the "brethren" of New England and (say) the Barbadian food-colony in the Carolinas or the tobacco colonies of Virginia may explain this. The empire arose, it seems, from a mixture of maritime history (the means) and greed and religious zeal (the motivation). The Opportunity (if I may continue the motif) being the rivalry between the French and the Dutch which left the British able to sneak past the two leaders. More Old Duffer's Book Corner (book reviews) The Greenhill Napoleonic Wars Data Book The Anglo-Dutch Naval Wars 1652-1674 All The King's Armies 1642-1651 The Oxford History of The British Empire Vol 1 Fleet Battle and Blockade Frontiersmen: Warfare in Africa since 1950 Ottoman Warfare 1500-1700 Wars of Imperial Conquest in Africa 1830-1914 Borodino Navies and the American Revolution Lords of the Horizons Eagles over the Alps Feeding Mars The Wars of Louis XIV Back to Perfidious Albion #99 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Charles and Teresa Vasey. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com