From Europe to India and America, Britain's Colonial Wars relates empire to the fortunes of war. In less than a century, between the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the settlement following the War of the American Revolution, the modern British state was born. This penetrating new analysis questions the centrality of the colonial enterprise to Westminster policy-makers obsessed with European issues, and explains how the impact of their strategies necessarily shaped the destiny of a multi-national and incoherent empire beyond the shores of Europe.