[PDF] Battle For Empire eBook

Author : Tom Pocock
Publisher :
Page : 314 pages
File Size : 30,96 MB
Release : 2013-06-07
Category : Anglo-French War, 1755-1763
ISBN : 9781909609549

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The first world war was notthat which began in 1914, but the co-called Seven Years War which, in 1756, brought into being global conflict. The new factor which dramatically altered the course of history was British sea power. With the support of the navy, a few thousand men dispossessed the French of their fledgling North American empire and saw them, and the Dutch, utterly vanquished in India. Attacks on Cuba and the Philippines crippled the Spanish Empire. Through feats of extraordinary courage and endurance, fighting merchant adventurers such as Robert Clive laid the foundations of an Indian empire. In North America, soldiers such as the Virginia militia officer, George Washington, the future first President of the United States, and James Wolfe, who died in the battle for Quebec, determined that Canada would be British - not French. In this vivid account of this first 'modern' war, Tom Pocock uses the testimony of eye-eitnesses to dramatic effect. Nigel Nicolson, The Spectator "Pocock's book makes enthralling reading... his prose is excellent." Admiral Sir Jock Slater, First Sea Lord, in The Times "Tom Pocock has written another stirring popular history... Pocock vividly brings his work to life. The lessons of history are brought to life by Tom Pocock and his latest book is a thoroughly good read." Lawrence James, Evening Standard "Tom Pocock has caught the flavour of this age. He is a first-rate story-teller, writing with an appropriate gusto about his robust heroes."

Author : Sam Barone
Publisher :
Page : 490 pages
File Size : 33,85 MB
Release : 2013
Category : Bronze age
ISBN : 9780985162627

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"In Dawn of empire, Eskkar the warrior and Trella the slave girl come together in a mighty struggle to survive a barbarian invasion and build mankind's first walled city. Now they face new menaces to their growing empire--the return of the hostile steppes horsemen, and their rebellious son, Sargon, who threatens to destroy everything his parents have worked so hard to create."--P. [4] of cover.

Author : Roger Crowley
Publisher : Random House
Page : 378 pages
File Size : 35,18 MB
Release : 2008-07-01
Category : History
ISBN : 1588367339

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In 1521, Suleiman the Magnificent, Muslim ruler of the Ottoman Empire at the height of its power, dispatched an invasion fleet to the Christian island of Rhodes. This would prove to be the opening shot in an epic struggle between rival empires and faiths for control of the Mediterranean and the center of the world. In Empires of the Sea, acclaimed historian Roger Crowley has written his most mesmerizing work to date–a thrilling account of this brutal decades-long battle between Christendom and Islam for the soul of Europe, a fast-paced tale of spiraling intensity that ranges from Istanbul to the Gates of Gibraltar and features a cast of extraordinary characters: Barbarossa, “The King of Evil,” the pirate who terrified Europe; the risk-taking Emperor Charles V; the Knights of St. John, the last crusading order after the passing of the Templars; the messianic Pope Pius V; and the brilliant Christian admiral Don Juan of Austria. This struggle’s brutal climax came between 1565 and 1571, seven years that witnessed a fight to the finish decided in a series of bloody set pieces: the epic siege of Malta, in which a tiny band of Christian defenders defied the might of the Ottoman army; the savage battle for Cyprus; and the apocalyptic last-ditch defense of southern Europe at Lepanto–one of the single most shocking days in world history. At the close of this cataclysmic naval encounter, the carnage was so great that the victors could barely sail away “because of the countless corpses floating in the sea.” Lepanto fixed the frontiers of the Mediterranean world that we know today. Roger Crowley conjures up a wild cast of pirates, crusaders, and religious warriors struggling for supremacy and survival in a tale of slavery and galley warfare, desperate bravery and utter brutality, technology and Inca gold. Empires of the Sea is page-turning narrative history at its best–a story of extraordinary color and incident, rich in detail, full of surprises, and backed by a wealth of eyewitness accounts. It provides a crucial context for our own clash of civilizations.

Author : Barry Strauss
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 16,12 MB
Release : 2022-03-22
Category : History
ISBN : 1982116692

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A “splendid” (The Wall Street Journal) account of one of history’s most important and yet little-known wars, the campaign culminating in the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, whose outcome determined the future of the Roman Empire. Following Caesar’s assassination and Mark Antony’s defeat of the conspirators who killed Caesar, two powerful men remained in Rome—Antony and Caesar’s chosen heir, young Octavian, the future Augustus. When Antony fell in love with the most powerful woman in the world, Egypt’s ruler Cleopatra, and thwarted Octavian’s ambition to rule the empire, another civil war broke out. In 31 BC one of the largest naval battles in the ancient world took place—more than 600 ships, almost 200,000 men, and one woman—the Battle of Actium. Octavian prevailed over Antony and Cleopatra, who subsequently killed themselves. The Battle of Actium had great consequences for the empire. Had Antony and Cleopatra won, the empire’s capital might have moved from Rome to Alexandria, Cleopatra’s capital, and Latin might have become the empire’s second language after Greek, which was spoken throughout the eastern Mediterranean, including Egypt. In this “superbly recounted” (The National Review) history, Barry Strauss, ancient history authority, describes this consequential battle with the drama and expertise that it deserves. The War That Made the Roman Empire is essential history that features three of the greatest figures of the ancient world.

Author : Stuart Reid
Publisher : Casemate Publishers
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 45,19 MB
Release : 2017-05-30
Category : History
ISBN : 1473885280

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Britain was rapidly emerging as the most powerful European nation, a position France long believed to be her own. Yet with France still commanding the largest continental army, Britain saw its best opportunities for expansion lay in the East. Yet, as Britains influence increased through its official trading arm, the East India Company, the ruler of Bengal, Nawab Siraj-ud-daulah, sought to drive the British out of the subcontinent and turned to France for help.The ensuing conflict saw intimate campaigns fought by captains and occasionally colonels and by small companies rather than big battalions. They were campaigns fought by individuals rather than anonymous masses; some were heroes, some were cowards and most of them were rogues on the make. The story is not only about Robert Clive, a clerk from Shropshire who became to all intents and purposes an emperor, but also about Eyre Coote an Irishman who fought with everyone he met, about Alexander Grant a Jacobite who first escaped from Culloden and then, Flashman-like was literally the last man into the last boat to escape Calcutta and the infamous Black Hole. The fighting culminated in Robert Clives astonishing victory at Plassey where just 3,000 British and sepoy troops defeated Siraj-ud-Daulahs Franco-Bengali army of 18,000 in the space of only forty minutes. The victory at Plassey in 1757 established Britain as the dominant force in India, the whole of which gradually come under British control and became the most prized possession in its empire. Few battles in history have ever had such profound consequences.

Author : Ian Ross
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 440 pages
File Size : 47,56 MB
Release : 2015-11-23
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1784081191

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The Roman Empire is on the brink of civil war... Only Maxentius, tyrant of Rome, stands between the emperor Constantine and supreme power in the west. Aurelius Castus is now a tribune in Constantine's army. But great honour brings new challenges: Castus is tormented by suspicions that his young wife has been unfaithful. And as Constantine becomes increasingly devoted to Christianity, he is forced to ask himself whether he is backing the wrong man. The coming war will decide the fate of empire. But Castus's own battle will carry him much further...

Author : Ian James Ross
Publisher : Abrams
Page : 271 pages
File Size : 37,93 MB
Release : 2016-06-07
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1468312278

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A Roman centurion sent to the empire’s distant northern edge encounters treachery beyond Hadrian’s Wall in this historical epic series debut. Roman Britain, Fourth Century AD. Once a soldier in an elite legion from the Danube, newly promoted centurion Aurelius Castus now finds himself stuck in the provincial backwater of Britannia. Just beyond Hadrian’s Wall are a savage people allied with Rome known as the Picts. When their king dies under mysterious circumstances, an envoy must be sent to negotiate with their new leader. And Castus is selected to command the envoy’s bodyguard. What starts as a simple diplomatic mission ends in bloody tragedy. As Castus and his men fight for their lives, the legionnaire discovers that nothing about his doomed mission was ever what it seemed. The first book in Ian James Ross’s Twilight of Empire series, War at the Edge of the World is an exciting debut from an author as gifted at telling a story as he is at bringing the Late Roman Empire to life.

Author : Trevor Royle
Publisher : Little, Brown Book Group
Page : 199 pages
File Size : 40,60 MB
Release : 2016-02-04
Category : History
ISBN : 1405514760

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The Battle of Culloden has gone down in history as the last major battle fought on British soil: a vicious confrontation between Scottish forces supporting the Stuart claim to the throne and the English Royal Army. But this wasn't just a conflict between the Scots and the English, the battle was also part of a much larger campaign to protect the British Isles from the growing threat of a French invasion. In Trevor Royle's vivid and evocative narrative, we are drawn into the ranks, on both sides, alongside doomed Jacobites fighting fellow Scots dressed in the red coats of the Duke of Cumberland's Royal Army. And we meet the Duke himself, a skilled warrior who would gain notoriety due to the reprisals on Highland clans in the battle's aftermath. Royle also takes us beyond the battle as the men of the Royal Army, galvanized by its success at Culloden, expand dramatically and start to fight campaigns overseas in America and India in order to secure British interests; we see the revolutionary use of fighting techniques first implemented at Culloden; and the creation of professional fighting forces. Culloden changed the course of British history by ending all hope of the Stuarts reclaiming the throne, cementing Hanoverian rule and forming the bedrock for the creation of the British Empire. Royle's lively and provocative history looks afresh at the period and unveils its true significance, not only as the end of a struggle for the throne but the beginning of a new global power.

Author : Raymond Jonas
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 426 pages
File Size : 42,7 MB
Release : 2011-11-15
Category : History
ISBN : 0674062795

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In March 1896 a well-disciplined and massive Ethiopian army did the unthinkable-it routed an invading Italian force and brought Italy's war of conquest in Africa to an end. In an age of relentless European expansion, Ethiopia had successfully defended its independence and cast doubt upon an unshakable certainty of the age-that sooner or later all Africans would fall under the rule of Europeans. This event opened a breach that would lead, in the aftermath of world war fifty years later, to the continent's painful struggle for freedom from colonial rule. Raymond Jonas offers the first comprehensive account of this singular episode in modern world history. The narrative is peopled by the ambitious and vain, the creative and the coarse, across Africa, Europe, and the Americas-personalities like Menelik, a biblically inspired provincial monarch who consolidated Ethiopia's throne; Taytu, his quick-witted and aggressive wife; and the Swiss engineer Alfred Ilg, the emperor's close advisor. The Ethiopians' brilliant gamesmanship and savvy public relations campaign helped roll back the Europeanization of Africa. Figures throughout the African diaspora immediately grasped the significance of Adwa, Menelik, and an independent Ethiopia. Writing deftly from a transnational perspective, Jonas puts Adwa in the context of manifest destiny and Jim Crow, signaling a challenge to the very concept of white dominance. By reopening seemingly settled questions of race and empire, the Battle of Adwa was thus a harbinger of the global, unsettled century about to unfold.

Author : Tom Holland
Publisher : Anchor
Page : 466 pages
File Size : 20,96 MB
Release : 2007-06-12
Category : History
ISBN : 0307386988

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A "fresh...thrilling" (The Guardian) account of the Graeco-Persian Wars. In the fifth century B.C., a global superpower was determined to bring truth and order to what it regarded as two terrorist states. The superpower was Persia, incomparably rich in ambition, gold, and men. The terrorist states were Athens and Sparta, eccentric cities in a poor and mountainous backwater: Greece. The story of how their citizens took on the Great King of Persia, and thereby saved not only themselves but Western civilization as well, is as heart-stopping and fateful as any episode in history. Tom Holland’s brilliant study of these critical Persian Wars skillfully examines a conflict of critical importance to both ancient and modern history.