This is the first full-scale examination of the politics, economics, adminstration, and execution of the expeditions to the West Indies which were mounted by the British against the French during the Revolutionary Wars. Hitherto these have been regarded as a side-show to the campaigns that were taking place in Europe; but the author, emphasizing the importance of the Caribbean in the Atlantic economy of the late eighteenth century, explains them as a bid for decisive
supremacy in the battle for trade, seapower, and the sinews of war. Britain committed tens of thousands of soldiers to the struggle, while France retaliated by inciting colonial rebellion in a war which changed the future of the Caribbean, altered European attitudes to negroes, and enabled Britain
to sustain its war effort in Europe.
Soldiers, Sugar, and Seapower sets the West Indies expeditions in their proper place as one of the most difficult and dangerous wars in British history, and places the fighting in its political, economic, and logistical context.
- ISBN10 0198229658
- ISBN13 9780198229650
- Publish Date 30 July 1987
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 7 August 2021
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Oxford University Press
- Imprint Clarendon Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 432
- Language English