The Colonial Ironsides is a comprehensive survey of the role played by
Oliver Cromwell's expeditionary forces in subduing Royalist outposts
abroad after the conclusion of the Civil Wars in the Three Kingdoms, the
Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, the Scillies, the West Indies and
North America. Beyond that, the book details the launch of the Western
Design against Spain in the Caribbean and during its course, the failure
of the expedition against San Domingo and the conquest of Jamaica. In
Europe, the book studies the role of Cromwell's expeditionary brigade,
and Charles II's army in exile, in the struggle between France and Spain
in the Low Countries during the last years of the Protectorate: the
Battle of the Dunes, the sieges of Dunkirk, Ypres, Oudenaarde and other
towns leading to the acquisition of Dunkirk and Mardyke as a British
colony on the Continent, the first since the loss of Calais under Mary
Tudor.
The book is, in some ways, a prequel to the author's earlier book
published by Helion & Co: The Last Ironsides: The English Expedition to
Portugal 1662-1668. As such it shows how the troops that later went to
Portugal and Tangier after Charles II's restoration in 1660 came to be
at Dunkirk. Overall, the book rediscovers a series of episodes in
British military history that have been forgotten, not detailed fully
since Victorian times. No other modern books describe the full extent of
this period of conflict, although there are books which detail several
of the campaigns. This decade of early expeditionary warfare marked a
change in English foreign policy from raiding the colonies of others,
chiefly Spain, to becoming an imperial power.
