Marlborough's America

This brilliant, unconventional work from Syracuse University historian Webb is the capstone of his 50 years in the making, four-volume history of the governance of Britain's 17th- and 18th-century empire (The Governors-General). Its argument? Rather than overlooking its overseas colonies through "salutary neglect," Britain governed them with a firm military-political hand. At the center of the story is the duke of Marlborough, captain general of the realm and hero of Britain's early 18th-century continental victories over France. By the 1720s, Marlborough's veteran aides and lieutenants had fanned out across the western hemisphere, displaced France in America, and restructured the colonies they came to govern with their patron's "complex corporate, militant imperial vision." It was these men who formed "the bridge between Marlborough's America and Washington's America"%E2%80%94in fact, George Washington makes an appearance at the end as a legatee of Marlborough's towering influence; both the great leader of the American Revolution and the new nation itself, argues Webb, are Marlborough's offspring. Such old-style history will not appeal to everyone, and Webb's sometimes mannered prose and surfeit of details are not for the fainthearted. But there's no denying the importance of this book or its likely appeal to readers interested in British, imperial, military, classic, top-down history. 11 color, 25 b&w illus., 3 maps. (Jan.)