Military Review English Edition January-February 2017 | Page 148
roadmap to the importance and relevance of the surviving veterans’ biographies. The chapters are dedicated
to each of the six surviving veterans and arranged in
the following order: Hagist’s research and findings,
photograph of the veteran, a thought-provoking sketch
by Eric H. Schnitzer rendering what the veteran might
have looked like as a young soldier, a drawing of the
veteran’s house at the time of interview, and Hillard’s
original interview transcript.
Hagist does an excellent job using pension and
census records, as well as witness testimonies not
available to Hillard, to align the veterans’ testimonies
with events, actions, locations, and battles they might
have experienced. The photographs by themselves
are worth the proverbial thousand words. His research
adequately eliminates elements of exaggeration or
failing memories that likely occurred during Hillard’s
interviews. The reader might find a degree of dynamic
equivalency on Hagist’s part (i.e., applying the author’s
sense of what the veteran might have sensed in the
American Revolution versus trusting the words or
phrases expressed by the veteran) when explaining how
revolutionary era soldiers behaved in certain situations.
However, Hagist’s research does not distract from
Hillard’s interviews. On the contrary, his research and
findings enhance our knowledge of the service these
veterans provided during our nation’s birth. This book
is recommended for anyone that enjoys combining history with genealogical research to validate or enhance
research conducted in previous eras.
Brook Allen, Fort Gordon, Georgia
ALL CANADA IN THE HANDS
OF THE BRITISH
General Jeffrey Amherst and the
1760 Campaign to Conquer New France
Douglas R. Cubbison,
University of Oklahoma Press,
Norman, Oklahoma, 2014, 283 pages
D
ouglas Cubbison’s exploration of Gen. Jeffrey
Amherst recognizes an important fact—that
most successful British Army officers seamlessly transitioned from leadership on conventional
battlefields to leadership of population-centric style
146
counterinsurgencies. Too often those two activities
are posed as antithetical, but All Canada in the Hands
of the British illustrates campaigns marked by successful command and control and a population-centered strategy. He argues that Amherst’s use of three
columns placed his force in the best position to defeat
the French Army and to control the population.
Much of Cubbison’s text focuses on the campaign of
Amherst subordinate James Murray. Murray excellently secured the
French population:
“Murray’s progress
was slow and deliberate, as he landed
strong detachments
ashore at every
parish (or township),
swore the inhabitants
to neutrality, and disarmed the Canadian
militia, on which the
French depended
for resistance.” Long
before great military thinkers and
strategists codified military treatises, Cubbison reveals
officers who excelled at nested modes of warfare—traditional combat and nonviolent activities.
What is most impressive, however, is Cubbison’s
integration of illness and disease into the exploration
of a well-led military campaign. While it is not a major theme in the book, Cubbison’s attention to illness
and fatigue is impressive. Scholars like Jared Diamond
and Alfred Crosby have made military commanders
look like nonfactors, who luckily gained victory solely
because of disease, while Cubbison joins authors such
as Elizabeth Fenn and John McNeil, who place a higher emphasis on how commanders managed disease.
The merger of meticulous campaign analyses written with a mind for operational language, extensive
primary source research, and a substantive argument
that should influence Seven Years War historiography
places Cubbison in a class by himself and makes his
book a must read for military professionals. It portrays eighteenth century leaders whose capability as
leaders should still impress today’s Army.
Joseph Miller, Orono, Maine
January-February 2017 MILITARY REVIEW