THREE VICTORIES AND A DEFEAT: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE FIRST
BRITISH EMPIRE By Brendan Simms Basic Books, $39.95, 832 pages,
illus. REVIEWED BY MARTIN RUBIN This is a book about Britain’s
political and military role in the 18th century by a professor
at Cambridge University superbly informed about his subject. His
research has been both diligent and extensive: not only has he
explicated decision-making and policy in council chamber and
battlefield in the particular period under examination, but he
has delved back into the previous century to better understand
why things developed as they did. Consistently articulate if
opinionated, he is a dedicated advocate for the thesis he is
expounding in colorful, compelling prose, often a dialectic with
some other historian, for he is a master of historiography as
well as a masterly historian himself. “Three Victories and a
Defeat” is a massive, complex volume full of incident,
characters and detail, but its argument is a relatively simple
one, laid out clearly at the o