Morgan takes up a treaty that historians have largely set aside. The peace of Ryswick, he notes, has attracted no serious English-language treatment since Macaulay's late-life sketch, and French and German scholars have passed over its commercial and colonial dimensions entirely.

That neglect, on Morgan's account, is hard to justify. Ryswick sits at the hinge of European diplomacy between Nimeguen in 1678 and Utrecht in 1713 — at once a gloss on the first and an opening onto the second. He also finds the bargaining itself worth attention, describing the conduct of the negotiations as among the least diplomatic in modern history, with the Emperor's endless stalling in a category of its own.

Morgan's own emphasis falls on the economic and colonial terms at stake in the talks.