ABSTRACT
Variety was the keystone of conflict in this period. The last quarter of the century is frequently presented in terms of the origins of modern war, with the American War of Independence (1775-83) and the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-99) seen as bringing in a new age of warfare. Problematic as that idea is for the Western world, it makes little sense on the world scale. Indeed, on land, the major power was China, and there were no significant changes in Chinese war-making in the last quarter of the century. Yet, as frequent and large-scale British campaigning in India in these years clearly indicated, the worlds of Western and Asian war-making were not separate, and part of the importance of this period was that it saw significant advances for European powers, not only the British conquest of Mysore in southern India but also major defeats of the Ottoman Turks by the Russians in the Balkans. Elsewhere, the struggles between Western and non-Western peoples also led to success for the former in the Ohio country in the 1790s, as the newly independent American state expanded. Meanwhile, having established a colony at Botany Bay in Australia in 1788, the British extended their control at the expense of the native Aborigines.
