Redmond's subject is what he calls the second supercycle, the decades in which Britain went from an empire bleeding territory and money in America to the hegemon of the nineteenth century. He treats that outcome as improbable and worth explaining: France had three times the population, the strongest army in Europe, an alliance with Spain and vast Caribbean wealth as late as 1790.

Several puzzles organise the account. Why the Austrian, Ottoman and Qing empires proved so durable. Why victorious Britain left the Dutch, French, Portuguese and Spanish empires standing in reduced form. Why the East India Company could absorb fifty million South Asians but not two million colonists. Why the United States and Prussia emerged as new powers.

The American Revolution, read beside the Dutch Patriot rising, France, Brabant and Haiti, looks institutionally conservative — continuity of authority, no challenge to slavery, western land as the real motive. Culture enters too: Mozart's new public, Smith, Gibbon, Pitt's fiscal reordering.