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.
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.
Introduction: A death in Philadelphia 1. 'Merry pintle Cout' 1707-1729 2. Grey Dragoon 1729-1739 3. Rumours of wars 1739-1742 4. Dettingen 1742-1744 5. 'in which wee fail'd: Flanders and the battle of Fontenoy 1744-1745 6. The dancers of Breda 1746-1748 7. 'I know the other to be a mad sort of Fool' 1748-1757 8. The madness of Lord Charles Hay 1757 9. ‘am now a downright Leopard’ 1757-1758 10. Rogues and True Friends 1758 11. Crossing Laurel Hill 1758 12. The fall of Fort Duquesne 1758 13. 'brave, without Ostentation’ Bibliography Index
A biography of Brigadier General John Forbes and his role in the Seven Years' War.
John Oliphant is Head of History at Cambridge Tutors College, UK. He is author of Peace and War on the Anglo-Cherokee Frontier 1756-1763 (2001) and a contributor to The Seven Years’ War: Global Views (2012).
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 honoring the terms of the
settlement boundary negotiated at the Treaty of Easton in 1758,
Oliphant sheds important new light on alternative possibilities
that might have alleviated the subsequent outbreak of violence
after these officers passed from the American scene. Summing Up:
Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.
*CHOICE*
John Forbes: Scotland, Flanders and the Seven Years' War, 1707-1759
... it is likely the best account of Forbes' life and career that
we can have.
*Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research*
Fusing impeccable research with brisk narrative, John Oliphant
provides the first full-length biography of a neglected, yet highly
significant, figure in British-American history. While John Forbes
is best known as the resolute commander who overcame daunting
obstacles to capture Fort Duquesne during the French and Indian
War, as this compelling and ground-breaking study demonstrates,
that triumph rested upon decades of hard-earned experience. In
tracing Forbes’s journey from penniless younger son of Scots
gentry, through regimental surgeon to brigadier-general, Dr
Oliphant not only offers a perceptive portrait of an innovative and
enlightened soldier, but reveals the patronage networks and
sometimes bizarre social rituals that characterized his
professional world.
*Stephen Brumwell, author of George Washington: Gentleman
Warrior*
Based on extensive research in archives on both sides of the
Atlantic, Oliphant’s authoritative study allows us to see General
Forbes, a hugely important but enigmatic man, in a much broader
context.
*Matthew Ward, University of Dundee, UK*
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