BRITAIN AND NAPOLEON

Abstract

The French Revolutionary wars, 1787–1802. By T. C. W. Blanning. London: Longman, 1996. Pp. xvii+286. ISBN 0-340-56911-5. £15.99.

The wars of Napoleon. By Charles J. Esdaile. London: Longman, 1995. Pp. xii+417. ISBN 0-582-05955-0. £14.99.

The Younger Pitt: the consuming struggle. By John Ehrman. London: Constable, 1996. Pp. xv+911. ISBN 0-09-475540-x. £35.

British victory in Egypt, 1801: the end of Napoleon's conquest. By Piers Mackesy. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. Pp. xii+282. ISBN 0-415-04064-7. £45.

Britain and the defeat of Napoleon, 1807–1815. By Rory Muir. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996. Pp. xiv+466. ISBN 0-300-06443-8. £29.95.

Traditional historians of war and foreign policy in Britain have often been accused – sometimes justly – of all manner of sins, among them Anglo- and Eurocentricity. There is no trace, however, of insularity in the five new publications by John Ehrman, Rory Muir, Piers Mackesy, Charles Esdaile, and T. C. W. Blanning on the struggle with Napoleon. The global sweep of that conflict, to quote Rory Muir's Britain and the defeat of Napoleon, forces the historian to address an ‘interlocking mosaic of problems’ (p. xii), spanning the Baltic to the Cape of Good Hope, and the Indian subcontinent to the Caribbean.