History and Atlas of Victoria’s Wars, 1815–1902

A lavishly presented atlas covering the many battles and campaigns that defined the reign of Queen Victoria.In 1815 the Treaty of Vienna concluded the Napoleonic Wars and provided the basis for a general European peace that lasted for nearly one hundred years. Great Britain’s last European rival for Empire and global domination had been neutralized, and by 1900, 10 million square miles of territory and 400 million people were under British control. British and colonial forces were engaged in action somewhere across the world on every day of Queen Victoria’s reign (1837–1901), and these conflicts are expertly explained and illustrated in this definitive atlas. Over this period of so-called Pax Britannica, Queen Victoria awarded or sanctioned 37 campaign medals, with a total of 185 clasps, for copious small wars, fought against irregular forces, as well as larger-scale conflicts fought against regular armies. Featuring 147 newly created maps, this beautifully presented atlas examines the role of Victoria’s Army, and to a lesser extent the Royal Navy, in the sweeping victories and dismal defeats of what Rudyard Kipling called the ‘savage wars of peace’.