The French and Indian War (Book Review)

Seymour L. Schwartz The French and Indian War 1754-1763 (1994) Schwartz is a surgeon with an avocation for maps. Compiling a chronicle of the Seven Years War around his collection of maps and plans was apparently a natural task for him, and brought him to that most desired of collector’s goals, showing off his specimens. The result is a source book rather than a history. Anyone who wants to fill in details of the war will find this a useful book. What struck me was the similarity of the forts: by the mid-eighteenth century, building forts was a mature technology. There are also portraits of the senior officers, all of which were of course aristocrats fulfilling their class’s obligation of military service, with varying skill and success.
     Schwartz does not explain how the eighteenth century fort functioned as a weapons platform or military machine, which it clearly was. He neither analyses the skirmishes and battles, nor judges the commanders. But I have no such qualms: several were more or less incompetent, limited by their training, and unable or unwilling to recognise opportunities for success. A few were clearly cowards, who retreated from or capitulated to inferior forces. The battle for Montreal is an exception: both commanders were above average in tactical skill, both were brave, and both were killed leading their forces into the field. Wolfe’s conquest of Quebec relied on luck and daring: no sensible commander would have tried to scale 180 foot cliffs in order to attack from the rear. It’s no discredit to Montcalm that he didn’t anticipate the tactic that defeated him.
     In the end the British won, making North America an Anglo-Saxon outpost. It remains so today, although demographic changes are diminishing the influence of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants that built and governed the two countries north of the Rio Grande over the next two centuries.
     As is common with low-budget productions, text and illustrations are often out of sync with each other. There are puzzling references to “plates”. The diagrammatic simplification of many of the maps makes the densely detailed originals easier to interpret. The reproduction of the maps and plans is very good, considering that in the mid-1990s photos rendered as half-tones were still the main mode of illustration.
     My avocation isn’t history, so I can’t judge the quality of this book. But it did clarify some timelines and geography for me, as well as filling in the cast of characters and giving me a sense of how slowly events proceeded in an era when the most urgent information moved at the speed of a fast horse. On this basis I’ll rate the book at **½