Shots Heard Round the World: America, Britain, and Europe in the Revolutionary WarBy John Ferling, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025. 532 pp. $40.00 (hardback). <scp>ISBN</scp> : 978‐1‐63973‐015‐5

John Ferling is a distinguished historian of Colonial America, the American Revolution, and the New Nation; Shot Heard Round the World is the latest of several books he has written on the American War of Independence, including Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence (2009) and Whirlwind: The American Revolution and the War That Won It (2015). The first of these explores the very narrow margin of American military victory in the Revolutionary War, while the second provides a comprehensive account of the entire revolutionary period, from the initial struggles over taxation through the final departure of British troops in 1783. Ferling's Shot Heard Round the World differentiates itself from these earlier studies by focusing on the international dimension of the struggle for independence. Most people with a cursory knowledge of the American Revolution are aware of the important role played by France, both in providing the American rebels with crucial financial and logistical support, as well as contingents of troops and a fleet that made an essential contribution to the decisive victory at Yorktown in 1781. Few, however, are aware that before it was over, the American conflict had become a world war, with fighting in Europe, the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, and India as well as in the 13 colonies. Ferling embeds the familiar narrative of the Revolutionary War within a larger framework of rivalries between the great European imperial powers. Great Britain was a victim of its own success in the 1770s. Its victory in the Seven-Years War (the French and Indian War in America) that ended in 1763 had been so complete, giving it control of the entire Eastern Seaboard of North America, that it reaped the enduring enmity of France and Spain; these powers embarked on programs of military and naval rebuilding and reform aimed at reversing their humiliation by the British. At the same time, triumph in the war left Great Britain with no apparent need for allies; increasingly preoccupied with its maritime empire, its interests diverged from those of the other European powers. When the American colonies rebelled, Great Britain found itself diplomatically friendless. Splendid isolation would prove to be a military handicap, forcing the British to go it alone against an unlikely coalition of the aggrieved. The American uprising that began in 1775 gave Britain's rivals an invaluable opportunity to revenge themselves and detach a significant amount of territory from its grasp. For their part, the rebels, short of arms, ammunition, and other crucial military supplies, realized the necessity of foreign assistance. Emissaries were dispatched across the Atlantic to seek help in Europe. A major spur to declaring American independence was the need to gain recognition and backing abroad. An American military could not have been equipped without firearms imported from Europe. The Dutch island of St. Eustatius in the Caribbean became a major entrepot for selling war material to American merchants. France proved to be the great power earliest and most enthusiastically receptive to American pleas for assistance; the government of King Louis XVI covertly provided the Americans with weapons and volunteer officers. Ferling argues that the great American victory at Saratoga in 1777 would never have been won without the logistical support furnished by a large French shipment of muskets and artillery pieces. The destruction of a British army at Saratoga persuaded the French to sign a treaty of alliance with the new United States and formally enter the conflict. Spain later declared war on Great Britain, and the British declared war on the Dutch because of the free-wheeling market at St. Eustatius. The war in the United States became one front among many as the European powers pursued their imperial ambitions. Ferling ably chronicles these international military maneuvers while keeping his focus on North America. By 1781, all the combatants were punch-drunk, reeling from the length and expense of the war. Yorktown decided the issue in the American theater, but fighting dragged on elsewhere into the following year before peacemaking became general. France and Spain made some gains at heavy cost, while the United States was a clear territorial winner. Ferling makes an unconventional but convincing case that French Foreign Minister Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, was the key player in winning American independence; in an international war, this determined opponent of Britain acted to greater effect than George Washington. The author has nothing to report.