Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven Years War in America

by Francis Jennings

Overview

“Empire of Fortune is vintage Jennings. He writes with as much flair and involvement as his predecessors, while challenging their assumptions and research at every turn. No one has done more to demystify the early American ‘wilderness’ or worked harder to dynamite the anglocentric folktales of colonial history.” —Peter H. Wood, Duke University

The third volume of the "Covenant Chain" trilogy, this work restores the Indians to the history of colonial America as human beings and shatters the myth of their savagery. It also revises the popular images of Wolfe and Montcalm.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393025378
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	03/17/1988
Edition description:	1st ed
Pages:	548
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Lexile:	1310L (what's this?)

About the Author

Francis Jennings is former director of the Newberry Library Center for the History of the American Indian.

Editorial Reviews

The Seven Years War (aka the French and Indian War) pitted the British and French empires against each other in a grab for the homeland of American Indians. This riveting, massively documented epic overturns textbook cliches concerning the struggle. Jennings argues that the Indians made every effort to avoid taking up arms; that they were forced into battle by land frauds, assaults and direct interference; that certain generals, far from being gallant heroes, used terror against their own troops and civilians. Here is Thomas Penn, renouncing his father William's Quaker faith and launching conspiracies that fueled fighting; George Washington lying to the Delawares; Ben Franklin supporting expansionism to his own political ends. Colonists' anger at war taxes and conscription sowed the seeds of the American Revolution. Completing a trilogy begun with The Invasion of America and The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire, this impassioned study throws valuable light on our history. (March)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Jennings offers the first study of America during the Seven Years' War (1754-63) in almost two decades. He views the war as both part of the worldwide conflict between the British and the French and as a prelude to the American Revolution. As the final volume of Jennings's trilogy on Native Americans in early America, this ethnohistory emphasizes the importance and the different political goals of the many tribes engaged in the struggle and challenges the romanticized accounts of previous historians such as Francis Parkman, Daniel Boorstin, and others. Well-written, witty, and meticulously researched, this deserves to be read by scholars and interested general readers. David Szatmary, Univ. of Washington Extension, Seattle

Library Journal