John Forbes: Scotland, Flanders and the Seven Years' War, 1707-1759 [Paperback]

In November 1758 Brigadier General John Forbes's army expelled the French army from Fort Duquesne at the forks of the Ohio River. Over seven months Forbes had co-ordinated three obstructive and competitive colonies, managed Indian diplomacy, and cut a road through over a hundred miles of mountain and forest.

This is the first full biography of Forbes, which traces his rise from surgeon in the Scots Greys to distinguished service in War of the Austrian Succession before his 1757 posting to North America. John Oliphant puts Forbes' life and career in the wider context of the social and military world of the 18th century and offers important insights into the Seven Years' War in North America.

Oliphant (Open Univ., UK) presents the first-ever full-length biographical study of an often overlooked British Army general, whose 1758 campaign against French Fort Duquesne played a pivotal role in transferring the trans-Appalachian region to the British Empire after 1763. Forbes traversed multiple locations in the 18th-century North Atlantic world, and Oliphant's scrupulous research and crisp writing offer clear insights into the variety of experiences, opportunities, and problems of British military officers entering this novel sphere of human interactions, violent or otherwise. Generously illustrated with seven maps, three figures, and four battle plans, the book situates Forbes's career in the broader context of the 18th-century British fiscal-military state and balances his achievements with the harrowing details of the physical ailments that bedeviled him throughout the latter years of his career. In contending that, in the aftermath of the French abandonment of Fort Duquesne, Forbes and Colonel Henry Bouquet dedicated themselves to honorla