While the First, or 'Great', English Civil War of 1642-6 was largely contested at regional and county level, in often hard-fought and long-lasting local campaigns, historians often still continue to dwell on the well-known major battles, such as Edgehill and Naseby, and the prominent national leaders. To help redress this imbalance, To Settle The Crown: Waging Civil War in Shropshire, 1642-1648 provides the most detailed bipartisan study published to date of how the war was actually organized and conducted at county level. This book examines the practicalities, the 'nuts and bolts', of contemporary warfare by reconstructing the war effort of Royalists and Parliamentarians in Shropshire, an English county on the borderland of Wales - a region that witnessed widespread fighting. Shropshire was contested during the First Civil War - when it became one of the most heavily garrisoned counties in England and Wales - and experienced renewed conflict during the Second Civil War of 1648. Based on a Doctoral thesis, and therefore drawing primarily on contemporary sources revealing much new information, To Settle The Crown examines key aspects of the military history of the English Civil Wars: allegiance and motivation; leadership and administration; recruitment and the form of armed forces; military finance; logistics; and the nature and conduct of the fighting. Furthermore, while previous studies have tended to concentrate on the Parliamentarians, the comparatively plentiful evidence from Shropshire has allowed the Royalist war effort there to be reconstructed in rare detail. This book reveals for the first time the extent of military activity in Shropshire, describing the sieges, skirmishes and larger engagements, while reflecting on the nature of warfare elsewhere across Civil War England and Wales. In also providing a social context to the military history of the period, it explains how Royalist and Parliamentarian activists set local government on a wartime footing, and how the populace generally became involved in the administrative and material tasks of war effort. Extensively illustrated, fully referenced to an extensive bibliography, and including a useful review of Civil War historiography, To Settle The Crown: Waging Civil War in Shropshire, 1642-1648 is a significant fresh approach to the military history of the English Civil Wars.

Immigration and Settlement, 1870-1939 includes twenty articles organized under the following topics: the "Opening of the Prairie West," First Nations and the Policy of Containment, Patterns of Settlement, and Ethnic Relations and Identity in the New West. The second volume in the History of the Prairie West Series, Immigration and Settlement includes chapters on early immigration patterns including transportation routes and ethnic blocks, as well as the policy of containing First Nations on reserves. Other chapters grapple with the various identities, preferences, and prejudices of settlers and their complex relationships with each other as well as the larger polity.

Liberty against oppression, right against wrong - a clear message has come down to us about the origins of the American War of Independence, one of the founding events of the modern world. As with so many legends, the truth is somewhat different. In this revealing account, Robert Harvey overturns most of our assumptions about the causes of the war. Both Britain and America were divided over the struggle, America violently so, while in Britain many favoured independence if it would avoid bloodshed. The war itself was vicious and confused, and marked by incompetence and bad faith on both sides. When it was over the Americans pushed out their French allies, while the British, who had encouraged black slaves to revolt, and Indians to attack, abandoned both to their fate. Yet after four years of misrule the Constitutional Convention imposed its own conservative counter-revolution, and out of bloodshed and suffering, cunning, idealism and courage, there emerged the infant nation that was to become the most powerful the world has ever seen. In this extraordinary and intensely readable book Robert Harvey tells the whole extraordinary story of its birth.