Frank McLynn - 1759: The Year Britain Became Master of the World

1759

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THE YEAR BRITAIN BECAME MASTER OF THE WORLD

Frank McLynn

Copyright 2004 by Frank McLynn

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

First published in Great Britain in 2004 by
Jonathan Cape, Random House, London

Printed by special arrangement with Jonathan Cape

Printed in the United States of America

FIRST GROVE PRESS EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McLynn, Frank.

1759: the year Britain became master of the world / Frank McLynn.
p. cm.

Originally published: London : Jonathan Cape, 2004.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9915-7

1. Great BritainHistoryGeorge II, 17271760. 2.

Great BritainHistory, Military18th century. 3. Great

BritainColoniesHistory18th century. 4. Great

BritainForeign relations17271760. 5. Great

BritainForeign relationsFrance. 6. FranceForeign

relationsGreat Britain. I. Title.

DA500.M24 2005

941.072dc22 2004057397

Grove Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

For Pauline
With love

I feel privileged to have worked with a number of talented people on this book. Tony Whittome was an editor nonpareil, meticulous but never pedantic. Will Sulkin remains an authors dream publisher, in so many ways the last of the literary Mohicans. Paul Taylor drew the maps with his customary skill and panache. Among the other individuals who sustained, encouraged or otherwise aided me while writing this volume I must single out Lucy McLynn, Colette Bowe and Mike Bowe for special mention. Yet the palm must go, as ever, to my wife Pauline, the finest executive producer any writer of serious books could ever hope for. I hope I have produced a narrative that matches their dedication and commitment.

Frank McLynn

Outstanding literary productions of 1759:

Candide by Voltaire
Rasselas by Samuel Johnson
The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith
GlInnamorati by Carlo Goldoni
The Sublime and the Beautiful (2nd ed) by Edmund Burke
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (Part One) by Laurence Sterne

The year 1759 should really be as well known in British history as 1066, for this was when the British finally achieved the global supremacy they would maintain for at least another hundred years. Most of the other, better-known school history dates pale into insignificance. The Magna Carta of 1215 changed nothing; Philip II of Spain launched other armadas after 1588; and 1688 ushered in what was a very precarious revolution for the first fifty years. The famous victories of Trafalgar in 1805 and Waterloo in 1815 are justly celebrated as outstanding feats of arms, but they changed little. Napoleon had already abandoned his invasion attempts by the time Trafalgar was fought and, even if Napoleon had won at Waterloo, he could not have prevailed ultimately against a coalition of Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia. If we can trace the beginning of the British Empire to a single year, it must surely be 1759. The defeat of the French that year paved the way for the Raj in India and made the emergence of the United States possible.

The entire history of the world would have been different but for the events of 1759. If the French had prevailed in North America, there would have been no United States (at least in the form we know it), for it is inconceivable that France would ever have ceded any of its North American possessions and, without the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, even if we assume the thirteen British colonies had revolted successfully against their French overlords a questionable assumption they would have been hemmed in on the Atlantic seaboard, unable to expand westwards to the Pacific. If France had won in India, the global hegemony of the English language could never have happened. Some say that the worldwide struggle for supremacy had to complete another chapter, in the Napoleonic era, before it could be assured. But Napoleon never looked remotely like solving the problems of seapower that prevented him from invading the British Isles. He had no Jacobite fifth column to help him and, even if we posit the near-impossible a successful invasion of England the already independent United States would eventually have risen to world supremacy. To some extent this is a simple matter of chronology. Napoleons best chance for planting the French tricolour on the Tower of London came in 1805, but he had already sold the Louisiana Purchase (the vast territories on either side of the Mississippi River in what is now the south-central United States) to Thomas Jefferson.