Simms makes his views of Britain’s needs, interests and achievements clear. He concludes that ‘by mid-century, a coherent British strategic culture had emerged. It was firmly Eurocentric: it gave absolute priority to preventing the growth of a hegemon on the Continent…. The colonial and naval spheres were subordinated to the Continental theatre’. (p. 673) Simms argues that a failure to maintain Continental alliances helped lead to failure in America, and that this result led to the restoration of the primacy of European politics in Britain.

Three Victories and a Defeat is a rich and dense book, yet it is not a dull one. Simms wishes to realign the study of British foreign policy during the 17th and 18th centuries from empire to Europe, and this bravura performance is a big step forward.

When Georg Ludwig, Elector of Hanover, reached England in September 1714 to become Great Britain's George I, his arrival at Greenwich was attended by a moment of farce: as the German prince sailed up to the landing stage, the crowds waiting to greet him were already cheering the boat containing the Prince of Wales, having mistaken him for their new king, who therefore stepped ashore to something less than enthusiastic applause. Brendan Simms doesn't tell us how George reacted, but he points out that the royal retinue was a great deal smaller than the one that had accompanied the monarch's great-grandfather, the Scotsman James I, when he assumed the English throne in 1603. I could have done with more such light relief in this massive (and massively demanding) piece of work.

It is a myth almost universally acknowledged that Britain's rise to global empire and world power was achieved at sea, that ours has been an insular and maritime history. As James Thomson's rousing mid-18th-century anthem Rule Britannia repeatedly points out, it was only because Britannia ruled the waves that her subjects could rejoice in the knowledge that they never would be slaves.

Simms, of Cambridge University, is among the finest of a new generation of British historians. In his most ambitious work to date, he addresses arguably the fundamental question of British identity: is it European or insular? Simms lines up solidly with the Europeanists, but provides a global twist.