The World in Flames - (Columbia Studies in International and Global History) by Marian Füssel

About the Book

The World in Flames is a bottom-up history of the Seven Years' War, exploring this epochal conflict from the perspective of contemporaries around the globe.

Book Synopsis

In the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), two European rivalries--between England and France and between Prussia and Austria--collided to spark a global conflagration. In the United States, it is known as the French and Indian War, a precursor to the Revolutionary War. In India, by contrast, it marked a new stage on the path toward British colonial rule. The war saw Spain's decline and Russia's rise; territories from Quebec to the Philippines changed hands. From Europe to the Americas, Africa, and South Asia, people across continents were swept up in clashes that began in faraway places and spread like wildfire.

The World in Flames is a bottom-up history of the Seven Years' War, exploring this epochal conflict from the perspective of contemporaries around the globe. Drawing on hundreds of eyewitness accounts, Marian Füssel offers a sweeping portrait of warfare and everyday life during the cataclysm. He vividly narrates battles and sieges from the viewpoints of bakers, generals, and everyone in between, tracing the roles of mercenaries and trading companies as well as regular troops. Füssel emphasizes how contemporaries perceived and understood the global nature of the conflict. At once a media war and an economic war for commodities such as sugar and fur, a war of emerging nationalism and a last religious war, the Seven Years' War was a laboratory of modernity, combining the old world and the new. A groundbreaking, world-spanning microhistory, this book shows us the first truly global military conflict in a new light.

Review Quotes

An exciting history of the Seven Years' War as a global conflict, combining lucid analysis of the main events and their outcomes with sympathetic treatment of those caught up in the struggle. Particular attention is paid to how contemporaries perceived the complex interactions between the war's many theaters and how the conflict's expansive character changed how they saw the world.--Peter H. Wilson, author of Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples Since 1500

Füssel lights up what we thought was a well-researched conflict. He brings to bear newly discovered writings of ordinary people, soldiers, civilians, pastors, tradesmen, aristocratic ladies, and ordinary women as they respond to the devastation around them. The war was seen as not only a military conflict but also a media event. A notably clear account of interlocking conflicts and the virtually simultaneous making of their memorialization.--Dorinda Outram, author of Four Fools in the Age of Reason: Laughter, Cruelty, and Power in Early Modern Germany

Ranging across this great global conflict with a wide perspective, awesome mastery of the sources, and a lively pen, Marian Füssel delivers a feast of information, insight, and entertainment.--Tim Blanning, author of Frederick the Great: King of Prussia

About the Author

Marian Füssel is chair professor of early modern history with special focus on the history of science at the University of Göttingen and a member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony.

Brían Hanrahan is a writer, scholar, and broadcaster who has translated ten books from German to English.