Modern World History

The Seven Years (1756-1763), known as the French and Indian War in North America, was perhaps the first war that might be called a world war. It involved the major European countries, North and Central America, the coast of West Africa, the Philippines, and India. A major player in the war was Frederick the Great (1712-1786), the king of Prussia and a great military leader.

Famed for his military successes and domestic reforms, Frederick the Great was a remarkable leader whose campaigns were a watershed in the history of Europe, securing Prussia's place as a continental power and inaugurating a new pattern of total war that was to endure until 1916. However, much myth surrounds this enigmatic man, his personality, and his role as a politician, warrior, and king.

Central to debates about modern German history is the view that an oppressive Prussian state cast a shadow on the development of civil society. In particular, historians have seen the absence of a revolution in the eighteenth century as a symptom of a delayed and incomplete emancipation of the Prussian bourgeoisie. Prussia's urban dwellers have often been portrayed as poor relations with the self-reliant and assertive bourgeois of Western Europe and the Atlantic world.