A nation conceived in the clash of empires

Americans suffer from the “Star Wars” problem. By affinity, we identify with outsiders and individualists, the resilient bands of heroes who take on a mighty empire in the name of freedom. And that is how our national story seems to begin. Yet today, we live in the most dominant nation in the history of the world, and we are at war with an enemy organized in guerrilla bands. Are we plucky rebels or minions of the Death Star? Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader? In “The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America 1500-2000,” a book of impressive ambition, historians Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton set out to prove that we can understand who we are only if we re-envision the entire course of American history.

We are not freedom fighters who accidentally ended up with an empire. We have always been empire builders, yet the unexpected consequences of our many wars have led us to expand our definitions of liberty. The authors’ bold reappraisal not only yields many fresh insights into our national history but also connects past and present. A book that begins with the unintended effects of French policies in 17th century Canada ends with the equally unplanned way in which Colin L. Powell wound up having to reconcile the lessons he learned from Vietnam with his support for the war in Iraq.

The longest chapter in “The Dominion of War” centers on the Seven Years’ War (1756-63). Anderson has previously written two volumes on the conflict, and this book appears alongside two others -- William M. Fowler’s “Empires at War: The French and Indian War and the Struggle for North America, 1754-1763” and Frank McLynn’s “1759: The Year Britain Became Master of the World.” Why this renewed interest in a war that is usually so hazy in memory that we cannot agree on what to call it? The answer to that question gets to the heart of Anderson and Cayton’s argument.

Since the 1990s, when America became the world’s only superpower, historians such as Niall Ferguson and Simon Schama have drawn our attention back to the empire on which the sun never set. The Seven Years’ War was that crucial moment in which Britain established world dominance. The battles fought in North America -- where the conflict is known as the French and Indian War -- were part of the first real world war, which also included clashes in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. But Britain’s effort to rule the empire it had won precipitated the American Revolution. This, then, is the perfect nexus of imperial ambition and unexpected republican outcomes. The more significance we give to these world-spanning events, the less strictly national or largely idealistic American history becomes.

Anderson and Cayton are particularly attentive to architecture, in all its meanings, and their treatment of the Seven Years’ War forms an important bridge in their argument. They frame “The Dominion of War” with a walk through the Mall in Washington, using the physical relationship of the Lincoln, Washington and Vietnam memorials as a touchstone for musings on the greater importance we assign our country as the homeland of freedom rather than our record as a warrior nation.

But the aim of their book is another form of construction: They see themselves as replacing the standard “suspension bridge” model of American history, in which the key moments are familiar topics such as Jamestown, the Revolution, the Civil War and World War II, and the connecting cables are the intervening years in which America overcomes its temporary limitations and flaws and “fulfils its destiny in the world as a whole.”

The narrative they have in mind is a much more dynamic and contingent story in which individuals and groups seek power, and then adjust to the consequences of their ambition. To accomplish this retelling, they employ an unusual -- and not always successful -- narrative structure, covering all of American history from the 16th century to the present in 10 chapters, each focused around a single person.

Starting American history with Samuel de Champlain is an immediate indication of the book’s fresh approach. Rather than beginning with obvious candidates such as John Smith or John Winthrop, where we see America through the aims of English Protestants in what will become the 13 Colonies, the authors use Champlain to explore a period in which Europeans were swept up in the calculations of native nations jockeying for advantage in their own conflicts. Similarly, a chapter focusing on William Penn is not the simple and heartwarming story of Quaker tolerance but, rather, another example of unintended consequences.

Penn’s colony was a great success: The European population doubled every 18 years and Indians found the colony a haven. But this success ensured that colonists would press on Indian lands, while it taught native nations that they needed European partners. Inadvertently, the colony dedicated to growing peacefully alongside the Indians forced more and more native nations to seek European allies, just as the Europeans decided to settle their global imperial conflicts in battle. The crossing point of native calculations, settler demands and European ambitions was the Seven Years’ War .

If there is anything to criticize in “Dominion of War,” it is that by dividing up five centuries of history into chapters, each centering on one individual, the authors are forced to rush in with so many background details that some passages read like textbook chronicles. Melville speeds by in half a sentence, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in another. Perhaps the authors felt they had to show how all of American history fits into their new architecture, but the real power in their book comes from their sweeping new vision of the dynamics of America’s past.

While they may all have been inspired by a belief in the relevanceof the Seven Years’ War, the authors of the three books have distinct goals. First published in England, McLynn’s book seeks to explain how Britain’s global empire came to be. Fowler, writing for a broad American audience, offers a detailed, confident narrative of the warfare in North America. Anderson and Cayton want to redraft the trajectory of American history and show that this nation was conceived in the clash of empires and born in war.

McLynn uses an innovative narrative strategy, beginning each chapter with a thematic prologue that explores an idea or person from 1759, only revealing the link to the events of the ensuing chapter at the very end. A riff on the silver age of Venice, for example, stops in on Casanova, Tiepolo and Goldoni as examples of the fluidity of identity there, as a preface to a chapter on the calculations of the French and supporters of the Scottish pretender to the British throne, Bonnie Prince Charlie.

In the English manner, this is one highly informed author’s view, and some of McLynn’s descriptions smack of exoticism, such as when he lingers on the ingredients in a voodoo ceremony or details the tortures employed by American Indians. He is not inaccurate, but there is a kind of “Mondo Cane” voyeurism in his retelling. Still, McLynn’s book reads like a session with an Oxbridge professor so at ease with his erudition that you don’t mind the occasional intrusion of a discomfiting tone.

Fowler is not out to change our sense of history’s grand currents. Instead, he uses a deep familiarity with sources to offer a readable account of the aims and actions of the Indians, colonists, English and French. With notes on the names of battle sites and a bibliographical essay, this book can be used by college students as well as vacationing history buffs.

Are we a nation of Darth Vaders or Luke Skywalkers? Anderson and Cayton suggest that the father-son link in the film series is exactly true of our own history. We are fundamentally imperialist, our nation born out of a crisis of management in the incipient British Empire. Empire is in our blood, and it is no surprise we are now fighting a war half a world away. But that is only half the story. Our imperial ambitions have, in unplanned and fortuitous ways, also caused us to expand our own freedoms; seeking to rule, we breed, and even become, rebels. “The Dominion of War” offers a challenging and insightful way to envision our past and one that is also a sobering prediction of our future. *

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From The Dominion of War

The need to protect American freedom by the direct exertion of power has always coexisted uneasily with the American faith that other peoples if offered the chance will voluntarily adopt political systems and values consistent with those of the United States. Whether justified by promises of liberation or not, coercion and conquest foster fear, resentment, and a desire for revenge much more reliably than they promote understanding and respect.