Marian Füssel

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.

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.

Sjuårskriget rasade mellan 1756 och 1763 och anses av många vara det allra första världskriget. Konflikten utspelade sig på slagfält runtom i världen, med Europa, Nordamerika och Indien som primära krigsskådeplatser, och krigets utgång kom att för alltid rita om världskartan. Även Sverige deltog i kriget, vilket i vår historieskrivning har kommit att benämnas det pommerska kriget. Kriget är flitigt skildrat i litteraturen och utgör fond till otaliga böcker och filmer, såsom Den siste mohikanen och Barry Lyndon. För första gången på svenska kommer nu en övergripande skildring av detta för världshistorien så avgörande krig. På ett informativt och tillgängligt vis skildrar Marian Füssel sjuårskrigets historia. Från Preussen och Fredrik den store via det brittiska imperiet till Nordamerikas indianer presenteras de olika aktörerna, deras intressen förklaras och det tidigmoderna världskrigets orsaker tydliggörs. Boken avslutas med en blick över de globala följderna och krigets minneskultur. Marian Füssel (född 1973) är professor i tidigmodern i historia vid Georg-August-universitetet i Göttingen.

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