1755 marked the point at which events in America ceased to be considered
subsidiary affairs in the great international rivalry that existed
between the colonial powers of Great Britain and France. This book
examines the Braddock Campaign of 1755, a segment of the wider 'Braddock
Plan' that aimed to drive the French from all of the contested regions
they occupied in North America. Rather than being an archetypal military
history-styled analysis of General Edward Braddock's foray into the Ohio
Valley, this work will argue that British defeat at the infamous Battle
of the Monongahela should be viewed as one that ultimately embodied
military, political and diplomatic divergences and weaknesses within the
British Atlantic World of the eighteenth century. These factors, in
turn, hinted at growing schisms in the empire that would lead to the
breakup of British North America in the 1770s and the birth of the
future United States. Such an interpretation moves away from the
conclusion so often advanced that Braddock's Defeat was a distinctly,
and principally 'British', martial catastrophe; hence allowing the
outcome of this pivotal event in American history to be understood in a
different vein than has hitherto been apparent.