This chapter considers the strategic dimension of conflict in North America between the outbreak of fighting between the French and colonial Americans in the Ohio valley in 1754 and the formal end of the War of American Independence in 1783. While this thirty-year period saw several local struggles between colonists and Native peoples, the focus here is on the two major conflicts – the Seven Years War (1754–1760 in North America, 1756–1763 in Europe) and the War of Independence (1775–1783). Both wars were global struggles, extending well beyond North America – the Seven Years War from its outset, and the War of Independence from 1778, when the French became belligerents. Even so, the chapter will concentrate on the American aspects of these struggles, and only indirectly address the Caribbean, west African, European and Asian dimensions. It will aspire to cover all the participants in the North American parts of the two wars – settlers, Native peoples and Europeans, particularly the British and the French.

Europe’s revelation of hitherto latent human powers had negative faces too, of which imperial expansion was one. The domination of weaker peoples brought suffering and destruction everywhere, often worsened by the limits to European power that placed stable rule over conquered populations out of reach, so that the dominators had regular recourse to brutal exemplary punishments, often justified by the racist discourse generated by the need to justify the whole system. The capacity of formal imperialism to endure was undermined by the seeds it bore of its own overcoming: first, the violent and expensive wars between imperial rivals and then the disclosure to dominated peoples of the knowledge and techniques employed to subject them. But from the beginning these horrors generated internal protests and critiques, often based on a heightened realization of and respect for cultural difference. By the middle of the eighteenth century a phalanx of distinguished and influential voices was raised against the system, never strong enough to rein it in, but testimony to the persistence of the more humane and generous attitude manifested earlier.

Chapter 1 introduces the geopolitical and scientific–colonial context of eighteenth-century Mauritius, primarily from the perspective of its governance. Mauritius was a French colony, and a very expensive one to run. It was managed by the Compagnie des Indes (CIO) until 1763 and then, in the aftermath of the Seven Years War (and dissolution of the CIO), was purchased by the French crown. By setting out the hidden dynamics of empire, this chapter provides a detailed discussion that explains why Mauritius was primarily a stopping-off point in the period under review rather than an island of commerce. A key finding concerns the internal divisions within the island over its management and policy, which is an important revision to prevailing assumptions in the historiography that such interests would be divided between policymakers in the metropole and those in the colony, where each has been assumed to represent a unified view. Hence, it examines the various experiments in colonial autonomy undertaken on Mauritius between the 1760s and the 1780s, including the complex alternatives relating to the agents who tried to build networks through alliances with local actors and Indigenous populations in the Indo-Pacific region. Lastly, this chapter spotlights the use of enslaved people in various projects in the island.

This chapter offers an example of the role of the Bank in European state finance. The kingdom of Prussia made heavy use of the Bank during the Seven Years War (1756—1763). Public finance in Prussia during this period was primitive, lacking basic features such as a bond market or central bank. Under heavy financial pressure, Prussian King Frederick II chose to finance much of the war through the production of debased coinage. The task of minting debased coins was outsourced to private contractors (“mint entrepreneurs”), who purchased much of the necessary silver in Amsterdam, making use of credit which was abundant in the Amsterdam market. Details of these transactions are revealed in the Bank’s ledgers. Frederick also relied on gold subsidies from Great Britain, which were paid via Amsterdam and can also be matched to Bank records. Finally, at the end of the war, Frederick called upon his entrepreneurs to engineer a reverse debasement (reinforcement). This activity once again relied heavily on Dutch resources, including remote smelting furnaces, Amsterdam credit, and Bank money. Traces of the entrepreneurs’ activity can again be seen in the Bank’s records.

The way in which major power wars have escalated into general or systemic wars is less straightforward than one might think. They start for various reasons and then become something else when other major powers join the fray and turn them into systemic wars. The initial grievances in these systemic wars may seem like acorns that become mighty trees. How, for example, does a bungled assassination of an Austrian archduke or even an attack on Poland mushroom into war on multiple continents? One answer is in the ways rivalries are linked. While it is true that the specifics of each systemic war have unique components, there are also some general features as well. One is that decision-makers do not tend to see general wars coming. They make decisions based on short-term considerations without necessarily seeing the big picture. That bigger picture includes linked or fused rivalries that blow up relatively local concerns into global wars. This chapter uses the Seven Years and Crimean Wars as examples. Rivalries like the Sino-Indian rivalry can be conduits to widening the local concerns that have the capability to become transformed into something far greater and more damaging.

This chapter contributes to the debates about Samuel Johnson’s politics by considering the inadequacy of “Tory” as a label as balanced by Johnson’s unique contribution to the British public sphere in light of his determination to oppose aggressive forms of cultural nationalism. Considering Johnson’s journalism, his critical biographies, and Rasselas, Hawes explores Johnson’s deliberate cultivation of an anti-colonial perspective that burst through the usual framework for public discussions of the Seven Years War. In opposing the “Whig interpretation of history,” Johnson set himself against the principal vector of expansionist ideology. In his ability to combine anti-slavery and anti-colonial positions, Hawes argues, Johnson is uniquely prescient – and sometimes politically quite radical. His politics need to be understood as specifically anti-colonial, often reframing discussions of supposedly national affairs as manifestations of a colonial agenda.

Chapter 12 explains how the French ‘musico-dramatic art’ functioned in practice and how it was theorised. The Introduction accounts for the 1762 merger of the Opéra Comique and Comédie-Italienne, describing the crossroads faced by popular opera. A case study of Le Roi et le fermier (1762) follows, Sedaine and Monsigny’s most ambitious work before Le Déserteur. ‘Politics and Kingship’ traces the origins of its libretto to English tradition: old ballads and Robert Dodsley’s The King and the Miller of Mansfield. Its figure of the monarch and its critique of courtiers are linked to Sedaine’s reworking. ‘The New Art in Action’ sets out Sedaine and Monsigny’s ambitious design, especially the ‘royal hunt and storm’ and overall approaches to musical planning. An analysis by Raphaëlle Legrand explains Sedaine’s techniques from a longer-term perspective. Musical absorption and transmission of political and human aspects is explained, taking in reference to France’s ‘new patriotism’ at the end of the Seven Years War. Theoretical aspects of ‘musico-dramatic art’ articulated by Laurent Garcin, Étienne Framery, Michel-Jean Sedaine and André Grétry are summarised. The importance of Philidor’s music is identified. The ‘Coda’ draws attention to the orchestral and symphonic nature of Philidor’s work and of subsequent popular opera.

Chapter 1 illuminates the inherent weaknesses of the French colonial empire on the eve of the Seven Years War and examines initial efforts to embark on imperial reform during peace negotiations between France and Britain. The chapter uses the correspondence of Jean-Antoine Riqueti de Mirabeau, governor of Guadeloupe in the Îles du Vent between 1753 and 1755, to shed light on the problems of the French Caribbean plantation complex and to show how Mirabeau’s experiences influenced the intellectual vision of his older brother, Victor Riqueti de Mirabeau, who co-founded Physiocracy together with François Quesnay. From here, the chapter analyses war-time discussions on the future of the French colonies within the Ministries of the Marine and of Foreign Affairs. While these discussions culminated in the well-known strategy to enhance the French Caribbean plantation complex, the chapter reveals that government officials were also contemplating alternative paths to empire rooted in a vision of mutual prosperity between the metropole and the colonies and a reorientation of colonial empire from the Americas to West Africa.