Beginning with a tomahawk smashed into the skull of a French envoy in the North American wilderness, the Seven Years' War spread across the world; to battlefields in Central Europe, the Caribbean, West Africa, India and the Philippines. By the end of the war, Britain had thrown France out of North America and India, and laid claim to the islands in the French Caribbean, Havana and Manila. But this moment of seeming imperial triumph held within it the seeds of the American Revolution...As Fred Anderson reveals in this engrossing narrative, American colonists, who had assumed that they were partners in the Empire, encountered British officers who regarded them as subordinates and treated them accordingly. Thus, the war taught George Washington and other provincials profound emotional lessons, as well as providing practical instruction in how to be soliders.