Parliament and foreign policy in the eighteenth century. By Jeremy Black. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xiii+261. ISBN 0-521-83331-0. £45.00.

Art and arms: literature, politics and patriotism during the seven years' war. By M. John Cardwell. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004. Pp. xii+306. ISBN 0-7190-6618-2. £49.99.

The British Isles and the war of American independence. By Stephen Conway. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. vii+407. ISBN 0-19-820649-3. £60.00.

Revolution, religion and national identity: imperial Anglicanism in British North America, 1745–1795. By Peter M. Doll. London: Associated University Presses, 2000. Pp. 336. ISBN 0-8386-3830-9. £38.00.

Politics and the nation: Britain in the mid-eighteenth century. By Bob Harris. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. 392. ISBN 0-19-924693. £45.00.

Parliaments, nations, and identities in Britain and Ireland, 1660–1850. Edited by Julian Hoppit. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003. Pp. xii+225. ISBN 0-7190-6247-0. £15.99.

Politik-Propaganda-Patronage. Francis Hare und die englische Publizistik im spanischen Erbfolgekrieg. By Jens Metzdorf. Mainz: Verlag Philip von Zabern, 2000. Pp. xv+566. ISBN 3-8053-2584-3. DM 114.00.

Irish opinion and the American Revolution, 1760–1783. By Vincent Morley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. x+366. ISBN 0-521-81386-7. £48.00.

Breaking the backcountry: the Seven Years War in Virginia and Pennsylvania, 1754–1765. By Matthew C. Ward. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003. Pp. 329. ISBN 0-8229-4214-3. $34.95.

The Jacobites and Russia, 1715–1750. By Rebecca Wills. East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2002. Pp. 253. ISBN 1-86232-142-6. £20.00.

It has never been possible to write the history of eighteenth-century Britain as that of an island entirely by itself. Over a century ago, the Cambridge historian, J. R. Seeley, famously insisted that the history of England (sic) lay as much in America and Asia as in England, whilst G. M. Trevelyan's classic narrative of England under Queen Anne (3 vols., 1930–4) was presented against the background of the War of the Spanish Succession. More recently, John Brewer's remarkable Sinews of power: war, money and the English state, 1688–1784 (1989) demonstrated the extent to which the British state, and its fiscal-political structures, were geared towards the mobilization of military power, primarily to be deployed against France. In The sense of the people: politics, culture and imperialism in England, 1715–1785 (1995), Kathleen Wilson revealed the importance of empire and imperial expansion in popular politicization, whilst Linda Colley's Britons (1992) showed just how central the struggle with France was to the development of eighteenth-century British national identity. At the same time, our understanding of the European and global state system in which Britain played such a prominent role has been illuminated by Hamish Scott's British foreign policy in the age of the American revolution (1990), together with many publications by Jeremy Black including British foreign policy in the age of Walpole (1985) and America or Europe? British foreign policy, 1739–1763 (1997).