I've been reading "Crucible of War" for awhile now - I have it by the bed, and I only read it just before we go to sleep at night, so it's taken awhile. It's a fascinating book on an era that I had not understood very well at all - the Seven Year's war (or, as most Americans know it, the French and Indian wars).

The French settlements in North America were not as widespread as the British ones, and - for the most part - were not expanding. That's why they managed to get so many Indian allies during the war - the Indians saw the French primarily as trading partners, and the British as competition. After 1761, when the war was settled in Europe, the various tribes didn't fully get the idea that France had ceded - during Pontiac's rebellion, they used French flags and paraphernalia, thinking that victory (and they took a lot of British forts) would draw the French back. This made the British misinterpret the rebellion - they didn't really see it as the pan-Tribe uprising that it was, instead seeing French perfidy that didn't really exist.

That laid the groundwork for more distrust later - but Parliament in London also made other perceptual mistakes. From the British government's standpoint, a larger army than they wanted to pay for was needed in North America, to guard the frontier. Debts from the long war were huge, and their perception was that the colonies had not been paying their way - which led to the various tax hikes of the 1760's and 1770's. The colonies, on the other hand, didn't understand the debt burden of London, but did see the sacrifices that various colonial militas had made (and these perceptions differed by colony).

All of those perception differences led to the Revolution in 1776, and this book explains the back story in a way that I hadn't completely understood before. If you really want to see that back story, I recommend this book.