The History of the 7 Years War

Send us a text Before the Seven Year's War reaches India in fulll, one of its most important combatants is already in place- and it isn't a government. this supplemental episode introduces the British East India Company: what it was, what it was created to do, and how a private trading company slowly became a political and military power. Tracing the Company's evolution from commerce to coercion - through militarization, political intervention, and the First and Second Carnatic Wars - t...

Send us a text In the aftermath of Braddock's defeat, the war in North America stalls. British authority fragments, colonial governments resist coordination, and Commander-in-Cheif John Campbell, Earl of Loudoun focuses on imposing order rather than taking the offensive. Along the frontier, raids multiply, forts stand isolated, and British power exists more on paper than inn practice. France, however, chooses a different path. In 1756, it sends a professional European general- Louis-Joseph de...

Send us a text Britain thought it could glide through 1756 on sea power and habit. Minorca proved otherwise. We follow the doomed relief of Fort St. Philip from the Admiralty’s hedged orders to John Byng’s compromised squadron, then into a battle where geometry, hesitation, and a ten‑minute delay cost Britain the initiative. The French didn’t need a glorious victory; they needed a functioning plan. They had one. The result was a tactical draw that became a strategic collapse—and a fortress le...

Send us a text In this episode, we watch Europe's diplomatic world turn upside down. For more than two centuries, the bourbon kings of France and the Hapsburg emperors of Austria had defined themselves inn opposition to one another, fighting over Italy, Germany, the Low Countries, and anything else that came within arm's reach. But by the 1750's the od rivalry was non longer useful. the loss of Silesia had shake Austria to it's core, France found itself stumbling into colonial confrontations ...

Send us a text A neat plan met a messy world. We follow the Empire’s triangular strategy for 1755—Crown Point, Niagara, and Beauséjour—and watch how fog, friction, and human choices bent it into something far larger than a frontier war. It starts at sea, where Admiral Edward Boscawen’s strike against a French convoy near Newfoundland captured troops and sealed orders, guaranteed British control of vital Atlantic routes, and detonated the fiction of peace. That single decision rippled across c...

Send us a text In 1755, Britain decided to move its collnnia problem he od fashioned way- by sending a general. Major General Edward Braddock, veteran ion the Coldstream Guards and chosen of the Duke of Cumberland, arrived in Virginia with two regiments of regulars and an unshakable conviction that discipline and geometry could tame a continent. they could not... This episode follows Braddock's il fated march to Fort Duquesne - the road building, the supply chaos, and the infamous battl...

Send us a text In the summer of 1754, as French forts crept ever closer to the contested frontiers of North America, representatives from seven British colonies gathered at Albany, New York, to discuss a problem everyone could see coming- and few seemed eager to solve. The result was the Abany Congress, a rare moment of attempted cooperation in a world defined by jealousy, fear, and mutual suspicion. While emissaries negotiated with the Iroquois and delegates debated plans of defense, the sha...

Send us a text Step away from the powdered wigs and marble statues of Europe—the Seven Years' War began in the mud and mosquitoes of the American wilderness. Join us as we trek into the Ohio Country, a forgotten crossroads that sparked global conflict. The Ohio Country wasn't empty forest—it was prime real estate. Rivers connected in every direction like an 18th-century transportation hub, making it the most strategic territory in North America. The French needed it to connect their empire; ...

Send a text The world of 1748 balanced precariously on the edge of chaos. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle had technically ended the War of Austrian Succession, but as we explore in this first episode, it was less a peace treaty and more "like cramming eight angry cats into a sack, tying it shut and walking away." From this uneasy truce would emerge the Seven Years' War—a conflict Winston Churchill would later dub "the First World War." We journey across the chess board of 18th-century power po...