During the nineteenth century, Britain maintained a complex network of garrisons to manage its global empire. While these bases helped the British project power and secure trade routes, they served more than just a strategic purpose. During their tours abroad, many British officers engaged in formal and informal scientific research. In this ambitious history of ornithology and empire, Kirsten A. Greer tracks British officers as they moved around the world, just as migratory birds traversed borders from season to season. Greer examines the lives, writings, and collections of a number of ornithologist-officers, arguing that the transnational encounters between military men and birds simultaneously shaped military strategy, ideas about race and masculinity, and conceptions of the British Empire. Collecting specimens and tracking migratory bird patterns enabled these men to map the British Empire and the world and therefore to exert imagined control over it. Through its examination of the influence of bird watching on military science and soldiers' contributions to ornithology, Red Coats and Wild Birds remaps empire, nature, and scientific inquiry in the nineteenth-century world.

In the last decade, scholarship has highlighted the significance of the Seven Years War for the destiny of Britain's Atlantic empire. This major 2001 study offers an important perspective through a vivid and scholarly account of the regular troops at the sharp end of that conflict's bloody and decisive American campaigns. Sources are employed to challenge enduring stereotypes regarding both the social composition and military prowess of the 'redcoats'. This shows how the humble soldiers who fought from Novia Scotia to Cuba developed a powerful esprit de corps that equipped them to defy savage discipline in defence of their 'rights'. It traces the evolution of Britain's 'American Army' from a feeble, conservative and discredited organisation into a tough, flexible and innovative force whose victories ultimately won the respect of colonial Americans. By providing a voice for these neglected shock-troops of empire, Redcoats adds flesh and blood to Georgian Britain's 'sinews of power'.

In an interesting turnabout, the Revolutionary War is seen through the eyes of a British family to whom an American prisoner of war has been entrusted. Technically the young prisoner is in Uncle Lawrence's custody, but the children soon forge a forbidden friendship with him after he nearly dies in an attempted escape. He becomes the Reb and they, his Redcoats. But when they learn of some events leading to his coming to Europe, even Uncle Lawrence, embittered by the unjust death of a friend in America, thaws toward him-but this doesn't stop the Reb from scheming to escape. Constance Savery deftly weaves themes of trust and forgiveness into an interesting plot with likeable characters.

Based on the letters and diaries of the British soldiers who served as the backbone of the army from 1760 to 1860, this illuminating book is rich in the history of a fascinating era. of illustrations.

A full-scale popular history of the American War of Independence.

This book provides a thorough introduction to the War of American Independence. Told with great authority and clarity the book describes and details the effects of each notable event from 1770 to 1781. The book examines each of the major battles and skirmishes but does not get bogged down in deep analysis of battle formations and strategies. Instead the book concentrates on the war as a whole and its political and ecomonic impacts on Britain and America and consequently how each commander's startegy was affected. The book is littered with anecdotes to give the reader a clearer understanding of how the war affected the lives of those involved.

It is autumn 1777, and the cradle of liberty, Philadelphia, has fallen to the British. Yet the true battle has only just begun. On both sides, loyalties are tested and families torn asunder. The young Redcoat Sam Gilpin has seen his brother die. Now he must choose between duty to a distant king and the call of his own conscience. And for the men and women of the prosperous Becket family, the Revolution brings bitter conflict between those loyal to the crown and those with dreams of liberty. Soon, across the fields of ice and blood in a place called Valley Forge, history will be rewritten, changing the lives and fortunes of these men and women forever.