A nation defined by Empire, 1755–1776

In the last years of the Seven Years War British fleets and armies ranged across the world, dismembering the colonial empires of France and Spain. Yet, as tension rose in the early 1750s and undeclared war gave way to open war, British ministers viewed the prospect of defending the British Isles and Britain’s European and world-wide interests with dismay. There seemed to be far too many points of danger. Confident voices about the security of the Scottish Highlands outweighed pessimistic ones, but concern was still being expressed. Many people were alarmed about the west of Ireland. In 1758 the Lord Lieutenant warned that the French could seize Cork or ‘land such a body, as may be sufficient in those Popish and disaffected counties to make a place of arms and transfer the seat of war from their own coasts into the south-west of Ireland in the wild parts of Munster and Connaught’.1 Hessian and Hanoverian troops had to be brought in to defend England. No-one doubted that Hanover itself was vulnerable. Assumptions that Minorca was secure were to be rudely shattered

Ancient history · Empire · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Australian History and Society · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History

• Continental Connections

  Open Access•Stephen Conway•History•2005

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• David Fieldhouse and ‘imperialism’

  Howe•The Journal of Imperial &…•1998

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