FINALIST FOR THE 2025 AMERICAN BATTLEFIELD TRUST PRIZE FOR HISTORY
Over the past several decades, the history of the American Revolution in the South has undergone a transformation to better incorporate regional events into the greater narrative of the war. Among these events was the vicious “backcountry” war from the Georgia border, across the South Carolina wilderness, to the North Carolina Piedmont between rebel Americans and loyalist and British forces. Centered in South Carolina, this running battle saw some of the most intense and continuous fighting of the war, and from its skirmishes, feints, and sieges, three key leaders emerged: American partisans Francis “Swamp Fox” Marion and Thomas “Gamecock” Sumter, and British Legion commander Banastre “Bloody Ban” Tarleton.
            For the first time, Backcountry War: The Rise of Francis Marion, Banastre Tarleton, and Thomas Sumter by Andrew Waters frames the history of these three men into in a single narrative, focusing on the events of 1780 in South Carolina that witnessed their collective ascendance from common soldiers to American legends. It was a time when British victories at Charleston and Camden left the Continental Army in tatters and the entire American South vulnerable to British conquest. Yet in those dark hours, Sumter, Marion, and others like them rose in the swamps and hills of the South Carolina wilderness. Fighting a wildly successful partisan war against better trained and better equipped British forces, including Tarleton’s British Legion, with victories at lesser-known places like Hanging Rock and Nelson’s Ferry, they gained precious months for the reorganizing Continental Army. Their collective efforts led to the stunning American victory at Cowpens and a stalemate at Guilford’s Courthouse the following year that finally convinced British general Charles Cornwallis to abandon the Carolinas for Virginia. 
            With background biographies of its three main protagonists, a thorough sketch of Great Britain’s Southern Strategy, and a sociocultural examination of the South Carolina frontier in the years leading up to the American Revolution, Backcountry War offers a fresh perspective on an extraordinary chapter of American history and a compelling account of the deadly contest between three of the war’s most charismatic leaders. 
 

The Eighty Years War offers an insight into the military factors at play in the creation of the Dutch Republic. In 1648 the Spanish empire agreed to a peace treaty that ended decades of fighting and resulted in the division of the Low Countries and the birth of the Republic. From the outset, the conflict between the Dutch insurgents and their Spanish sovereign lord captured the imagination. As a result of eighty years of warfare, the provincial States and the Calvinists gained the upper hand in the north and the Spanish rulers and the Catholic church in the south. Against all expectations, Philip II and his successors failed to win a conclusive victory over their rebellious Dutch subjects; in the end Spain was compelled to admit military defeat at the negotiating table in Münster and recognise the breakaway Dutch provinces as a sovereign state. The birth of the new state was to no small degree determined by the balance of military power on land and at sea, and this book, illustrated in colour throughout, brings together all aspects of our country’s military history for the first time. Filling a gap in current scholarship, The Eighty Years War investigates the relationship between maritime and land-based developments in the fields of weapons technology, tactics and organisation in the period from 1568 to 1648.

The Final Volume in the Award-Winning Wars for North America Trilogy: King William's, Queen Anne's and King George's Wars
King George’s War and the Thirty-Year Peace continues the contest for North America from the end of Queen Anne’s War in 1713, marking the beginning of the Thirty-Year Peace, through the start of King George’s War in 1744, to its conclusion with the signing of Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle four years later. While there would be little fighting between the French, Spanish, and British colonies in North America during the Thirty-Year Peace—the Franco-Spanish conflict of 1719 being an exception—for the French and British internally it did not prove to be peaceful. Conflicts with former Indigenous allies erupted, including with the Three Years War, the Yamassee War, and the Natchez and Chickasaw Wars. In the south the peace was ruptured by the opening of the War of Jenkin’s Ear in 1739, which led to an attempt by South Carolina and the new colony of Georgia to seize Spanish St. Augustine, and a counter-attack by St. Augustine and Cuba aimed at the destruction of the two British colonies. While this Anglo-Spanish conflict would shift farther south into the Caribbean, to the north, news of another war between France and Britain would arrive in 1744. King George’s War, the North American component of Europe’s War of Austrian Succession, would start in Nova Scotia with French attacks on the weakly held British colony. This provocation inspired a response in the form of one of the boldest expeditions of the colonial period—Massachusetts Governor William Shirley’s successful campaign against Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island. With the French fortress in British hands and the cry of delenda est Canadaechoing through the American colonial assemblies, Shirley turned to the conquest of French Canada and convinced London to dispatch a fleet to assist in the capture of Montreal and Quebec. In Paris, news of Louisbourg’s surrender elicited an unexpected reaction in the form of one of the largest French naval expeditions ever sent to North America, with explicit orders to retake Cape Breton and expel the British from Nova Scotia. Thus, by the summer of 1746, both British and French sentries scanned the eastern horizon daily for a fleet that would determine the destiny of the conflict, but neither would be happy with what they found. 
            The final volume in Michael G. Laramie’s acclaimed histories of the European struggle for North America that set the stage for the French and Indian War, King George’s War and the Thirty-Year Peace: The Third Contest for North America, 1714–1748, takes the reader along with the combatants into the field and waterways, including Native American, French, Spanish, Provincial, and British. Based on a rich variety of primary sources and fully illustrated with original maps, this volume joins the author’s King William’s War and Queen Anne’s War as the modern history of these lesser-known—but enormously important—conflicts that shaped the political story of North America.
 

The British campaign to capture Fort Carillon on the Ticonderoga Peninsula in 1758 resulted in the largest battle of the French and Indian War. Crafted by Prime Minister William Pitt, the scope and scale of the British effort was staggering, calling for their northern colonies to raise 20,000 men to rendezvous with the British Regulars at Albany. The directive would test the patience, resources, and will of the colonial governments as well as that of the newly appointed the British commander-in-chief, General James Abercrombie. For the defenders of New France matters were dire. Reports were arriving that Abercrombie’s numbers were over twice the entire fighting strength of Canada. For the French field commander, the Marquis de Montcalm, there were few options. The Marquis had long opposed defending frontier forts, calling for abandoning these posts at the first sign of threat in order to conserve the colony’s resources. The French Governor disagreed and dispatched Montcalm and his white-coated French regulars with orders to defend Fort Carillon. With his army the only thing that stood between the British and the interior of Canada, there appeared to be a single path before the Marquis. Whether the Governor liked it or not, a rearguard action followed by a retreat down Lake Champlain was the only answer that would leave the army of Canada in position to fight again. Yet, within the span of a few days Montcalm would set these views aside, and suddenly risk both his army and the fate of Canada on a single risky battle.
Based on journals, letters, and accounts of the participants on both sides, The Road to Ticonderoga: The Campaign of 1758 in the Champlain Valley by Michael G. Laramie recounts this unexpected tale of victory and defeat on the North American frontier. Here we learn how the unexpected death of a dynamic leader, George Howe, elder brother of Richard and William, nearly crushed “the soul of General Abercrombie’s army,” leading to misinterpreted orders and hesitation on the part of the British. At the same time, the French commander perilously underestimated the ability of his own forces while overestimating his enemy’s before his fateful and unexpected decision to make his stand at Ticonderoga. With lessons and repercussions for future warfare in North America, The Road to Ticonderoga shows how a series of small mistakes can cascade into a catastrophe under weak leadership—or be exploited by a strong one.
 
 

This text is an eyewitness account of the crucial first five years of the War of Candia (1645–1669), also known as the Cretan War and Fifth Ottoman-Venetian War: the war between the Republic of Venice and her allies against the Ottoman Empire and the Barbary States. It is a primary source for the longest Mediterranean conflict of the early modern age.

Composed by Emmanuel Mormori, a hitherto obscure Greek Cretan nobleman, the text is accompanied by an extensive introduction focusing on the author, who appears to have been a Venetian intelligence agent in Ottoman-conquered Chania (in Crete), and, for a period of five years, became key to the Venetian war effort. The volume includes a dossier of documents illuminating this figure, culled from the collections of the State Archive of Venice.

"Wars Overseas focuses on Dutch military actions outside Europe in the early-modern period. Those actions were rooted in the Eighty Years’ War, the conflict between Spain and the northern Netherlands that led to the creation of the independent Dutch Republic. The Republic was determined to trade in tropical products from Asia, Africa and the Americas, commodities on which the Iberians had had a monopoly for a century or more. To do so, however, it would have to fight. The fledgling State did not itself have the resources for such an undertaking and effectively left it to two monopolistic trading companies, the Dutch East India Company or VOC and the Dutch West India Company or WIC. In Asia, through an adroit policy of war and diplomacy, the VOC built a powerful trade-based empire that lasted for almost two centuries. The WIC began with a large-scale offensive in the Atlantic area, operating in both Africa and the Americas, albeit with less success than its sister company in Asia. In those conflicts overseas, empire builders like Jan Pietersz Coen and Johan Maurits of Nassau played crucial roles. How did they act? What resources did they have? And how did the military revolution in Europe impact the process of Dutch expansion overseas? Wars Overseas, the first comprehensive overview of Dutch military action in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, examines these and many other questions in detail, while thematic chapters focus on the deployment of sailors, soldiers and ships, on weapons and fortification-building, and on the confrontation with non-European allies and adversaries."