From the inauguration of George Washington to the birth of the cotton trade in the American South, from the British Empire's war in India to the street battles of the French evolution, Andress shows how the struggles of this explosive year would dominate the Old and New Worlds for the next 200 years.

First published: London : Little, Brown, 2008.

"He snatched lighting from the heavens" : Benjamin Franklin, the Enlightenment and France's crisis of the 1780s -- "The best model the world has ever produced" : governing America and Britain in the traumatic 1780s -- "Vibrating between a monarchy and a corrupt oppressive aristocracy" : The woes of France and America, 1787-8 -- "The seeds of decay and corruption" : Britain, empire and the king's madness, 1784-8 -- "The base laws of servitude" : empire, slavery and race in the 1780s -- "That offspring of tyranny, baseness and pride" : abolitionism, political economy and the people's rights -- "Constant effort and continuous emulation" : the revolutions of cotton and steam -- "This general agitation of public insanity" : France and Britain in the spring of 1789 -- "Highly fraught with disinterested benevolence" : empire, reason, race and profit in the Pacific -- "Deep rooted prejudices, and malignity of heart, and conduct" : President Washington and the war in the West -- "No, sire, it is a revolution" : from the Estates-General to the Bastille, France, May-July 1789 -- "For all men, and for all countries" : declaring rights in America and France -- "Your houses will answer for your opinions" : the French Revolution imperiled -- "The greatest event it is that ever happened in the world" : the British and the French Revolution -- Conclusion : 1789/1798.