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Why does the article need to apologise that the book does not address “questions of gender, race, or generational relations”? There’s more than one prism through which we can look at the past (or the present, for that matter).

Anyway, the article makes a good case. And yes, they know about the seven years’ war.

Archived here: https://archive.md/GAOgo .

The whole sentence is:

"This is history from above, which deals with foreign policy, war and some of its domestic ramifications, but not so much, or not at all, with questions of gender, race, or generational relations. To have included more on these dimensions, of which the author is perfectly aware, would have required a different and even longer book."

It doesn't really look like an apology to me. The reviewer is just telling us which prism the book uses to look at the past.

The question is, why those specific things? Surely there's hundreds of other issues not being considered in the book, so telling you which several issues out of hundreds are not considered does not provide much information on what prism the book does use to look at the past. Only telling which ones are considered does that. That's just Information Theory 101.
The first sentence says what is considered

>This is history from above, which deals with foreign policy, war and some of its domestic ramifications

as far as saying gender, race and generational relations were not considered I guess we know the reason, because there are people who consider these issues of overriding importance and are bound to question why they were not included in anything they read. Perhaps the author has already had these questions asked by people who reviewed the book and they decided to forestall further questions by saying there was insufficient space to address the issues.

Well, to be fair, even the "positive" information here seems quite a bit broader than the "negative" information. Like, "war" is a very broad topic on its own. You can describe the events (battles and such), you can describe the technological issues of war (there's lots of books specifically dealing with history of military technology), the logistical issues (which is basically a specific branch of economic history if you think about it -- how do you supply an army on the move has always been critical), etc. etc.

So even if to some extent the scope was mentioned, saying that a book about Napoleonic Wars is (surprisingly!) a book about war (which is essentially what "foreign policy, war and some of its domestic ramifications" basically boils down to) isn't quite what I'd expect as new specific information on what a book about Napoleonic wars might tackle. Subtracting a few very specific aspects doesn't help here.

>Well, to be fair, even the "positive" information here seems quite a bit broader than the "negative" information. Like, "war" is a very broad topic on its own.

war is broader than gender? Everyone has the latter.

I don't think I would agree that war is a broader issue than generational issues, since generational issues might be different from generation to generation but war tends to be a pretty well known subject.

Hey this show is about war, ok I know what that is, and this show is about generational issues - ok what's that about then? In short, I do not agree that war is a broader issue than at least two of the mentioned issues. Not sure about race but if I were to guess I'd say war is probably broader - given that race is not a real thing and thus dealing with race must in fact be dealing with racism.

> war is broader than gender? Everyone has the latter.

Everyone has a species, and yet we share most genes with other mammals. So when you're describing some fundamental topic like the role of glucose in a mammal cell, the fact that everyone has a species suddenly becomes much less relevant.

Furthermore, your question probably should have been "war is broader than gender aspects of war?", since it's quite obvious that there is a vast space of gender topics outside of war and merely "gender" covers those (hence the broad topic), but they're also irrelevant here. Ditto generational issues, etc.

> The question is, why those specific things?

Because for how important they have been over the course of history, a lot of historical analysis has closed its eyes to them.

It's like writing an analysis of bovines without any mention of the fact that they are domesticated. It doesn't mean that it's a bad analysis, it's a broad field, and anyone working in it can freely choose which particular subset of it to cover. But it is a notable omission.

Again, there's like a hundred topics that have been omitted from history books, and saying which three of those your book doesn't cover isn't helpful if you're trying to promote a book. If I were to write a book about Ancient Egypt, I wouldn't say "I'd like to present to you my new book about Ancient Egypt. The book is NOT involved with Middle Kingdom metalworking or the lives of lower rank scribes. Thank you for your attention." or anything like that, since you'd still have no idea of what it is about. Your uncertainty about the content would have decreased very little compared to some other things I could have told you in about the same volume of text -- for example that the book was actually about the estimated quantitative economic history of Egyptian agriculture (crop yields, taxes, etc.) from Old Kingdom to Roman Egypt or something like that.
Because they are the currently popular way of doing new analyses of history, and people will typically expect new scholarship on already well-covered topics like the Napoleonic Wars to be performed in the currently popular fashion?

I don't think Information Theory is typically covered at the 100 level, but if it were, I'm sure they would include things like conditional and relative entropy.

Your question amounts to "Why does an article about history have to address what is currently seen as the cutting edge of historiography?" Presumably a historian is interested in the interests of their own profession, and therefore is aware of what has been, for the last 50 years, the changing focus of historiography.

That a professional should be aware of what is happening in their own profession is not a surprising idea, nor is it surprising that a reviewer would also want to give acknowledgement to those professional concerns.

>"Why does an article about history have to address what is currently seen as the cutting edge of historiography?"

Identity politics is the « cutting edge of historiography » ?! It looks like the butt-end of it to me. At least I can't say I've seen it ever being taken seriously by proper historians in the periods I'm concerned with. Of course you could make the case that it's just conservatism and intellectual stiffness, and that it'll percolate eventually. You could also make the case that's it's not a very fruitful research field. The bulk of the work in social history and the history of mentalities has been done, as far as I'm aware, especially in regards to the Modern period. Historical materialism and its descent have ran their course, more or less. If anything the cutting edge of historiography is reassessing traditional narratives that predate it, as well as feeding on the progress in other disciplines that use a lot of computer modelling (genetics, linguistics).

You are equating historiography's increasing focus on "questions of gender, race, or generational relations" to "identity politics". That is quite a leap. One can, and should, draw political conclusions from history, but that doesn't mean that professional historians are being overtly political merely for expanding the focus of their research.

I'll point out that the expanding focus of history has been constant at least since the mid-1800s. The historian Fernand Braudel once quoted the historian Jules Michelet, who had boasted in 1862, "Only in the modern age have we discovered truly universal history." Braudel remarked "Even since then historian's have been looking over their shoulder."

The point is, Michelet felt he had invented universal history because he had expanded the focus of history to include some economic realities, yet his focus still seemed limited compared to the work that Braudel and the Annales School were doing in the early and mid 20th Century. And so Braudel wondered, would his own work seem limited to people living in the mid 21st Century? And of course, the answer is yes. The concerns of history, and the methods of historiography, continue to expand, constantly.

I'd still argue for the Seven Years War as a better candidate- it actually addressed global issues (the fate of N America and India), whereas the Napoleonic Wars were very much about Britain trying to maintain a status quo antebellum in Europe.
I suggest you read the book, because Britain cared about keeping France from completely dominating Europe and from having ports on La Manche a great deal, but the status quo antebellum not at all.
"As the author shows, the reason for this imperial expansion was not primarily economic greed, important though that was, but the geopolitical desire to pre-empt European rivals."

This statement is a false dichotomy. One does not pre-empt one's enemies from doing something unless one fears they will gain power from their use of the thing.

I don’t think it is an apology, but it is jarring and I’m honestly confused what it is trying to say.

Of course the book deals with the topics it already listed and not gender and so on.. I’m not at all sure why it tells us it doesn’t deal with other topics.

Still don’t understand after reading all the responses here too…

The Seven Years War was a truly global war with fighting in North America, the Caribbean, and India in addition to Europe. It was even kicked off by a young George Washington. It definitely gets my vote as the first truly global war.
Arguably the seven year war, American war of independence, and napoleon of wars are all one conflict.

Just like ww1 and ww2 are the same conflict with a 20 year ceasefire to raise more cannon fodder.

There is nothing new under the sun.
Another idea: for those interested even only a little, I highly recommend the audiobook series Master and Commander, read by Simon Vance. Fantastic journey around the world in Napoleonic times. Great for road trips or as nightly sedative. British Point of view, but charming, exciting, and informative. About sailing, history, team work, good and poor management, and the foundations of ecology.
I’m currently reading the Aubrey-Maturin series, can’t recommend it enough. I also liked the Hornblower series set in the same era by C.S. Forester which is centred around quite a different character who plays the role of a naval officer. There’s a good TV adaptation of it too which I think is available on YouTube.
You might also enjoy the Flashman series
+1 on Hornblower the TV series. Had no idea it was based on a book!
If you liked the TV series I think you’ll like the books too, and they cover a lot more of Hornblower’s life which is cool.

There’s some debate on which order to read the books, either the order they were published or the chronological order of the story.

Most of the way through the book right now and it is indeed living up to its promise. I had become aware of a lot of holes in my understanding of events around, e.g., British consolidation in India during this period or the broader diplomatic context of South American independence movements and the book is doing a good job of filling them in.
WW0. Indexing starts at zero.
Was the seven years’ war WW-1, then?
Everyone knows WW0 was when the Sea Peoples ravished Bronze Age societies
Well, in between those, Genghis Khan was tearing down empires all across Asia, the Middle East, and eastern Europe. Certainly global in scope for the time.
This review, is a great cheat sheet for high school students studying the Napoleonic era. Quick - forward it to them before finals! This is also just a good book review, too bad it's pay walled - thanks for archive link below. (strange to hide an ad, high form ad, but still an ad. They should have a switch - free for reviews.)
Saw title, came to comment about the Seven Years War, but saw everyone beat me to it.
The politics and scale of the Napoleonic wars has always confused me.

It’s not a world I recognize and honestly that extends to WWI even.

Highly recommended:

Master and Commander (2003 film)