The reign of King William and Queen Mary has been strangely neglected when it was the pivotal point in the development of the British Empire and the dominance at sea of the Royal Navy. This new book corrects the omission with a stylish review of what could be described as the first global war. – Very Highly Recommended
IMAGE: B2863.jpg BUYNOW:  LINKS: DESCRIPTION: The reign of King William and Queen Mary has been strangely neglected when it was the pivotal point in the development of the British Empire and the dominance at sea of the Royal Navy. This new book corrects the omission with a stylish review of what could be described as the first global war. – Very Highly Recommended The two daughters of the much hated Roman Catholic King James II were raised as Protestants and secured the Protestant succession. First, Mary Stuart, married to the Dutch William of Orange, was invited by Parliament to replace her father who fled into exile. The reign of William and Mary covered battles on land and at sea to fight off the attempts of James and the Jacobites to regain the British throne. It was a global conflict and it marked the serious development of the British Empire, made possible by the rise of the Royal Navy and its dominance of the war at sea. The major focus on land was in Ireland and Scotland where the Jacobites attempted to defeat William to seize the throne back, but the most important battlefields became those in America and at sea in supporting British forces in America. William was a warrior King who is remembered still in Ireland for his defeat of the Catholics. While Catholics and Protestants in Ireland still hold strong feelings against and for William, were he has been the focal point of conflict between the two communities, he has strangely been neglected in the rest of Britain. The later Seven Years War has been better remembered but it is the Napoleonic Wars that have received the most attention of historians. The author reviews the sequence of events as William waged war. Without the successes of his forces, the Seven Years War would not have seen the Royal Navy stamp its authority on the oceans. Without the Seven Years War establishing British naval supremacy, the Battle of Trafalgar would not have been able to confirm that supremacy and herald a hundred years of peace, where there was no navy to stand against the Royal Navy. Without that sequence, the British Empire would have been unable to develop because its sea routes would have been vulnerable. In setting that sequence out, the importance of King William's War is indisputable. It is a remarkable story.