The “Seven Years'” or “French and Indian” War is sufficiently remote from contemporary concerns that few would describe it as the “War That Made America.” But Fred Anderson brilliantly and persuasively argues that the worldwide conflict, which began here, changed not only America but the world. It fundamentally transformed the geopolitics of the Americas, upset the European balance of power, and triggered the American Revolution. Ours was the first in a series of revolutions, most of them taking place in the Americas, that did not end until well into the 19th century.

Mr. Anderson has written an elegant gem of a book about a very big subject. It is a narrative tour de force because he never allows the reader to become confused about the relevance of the many complicated twists and turns in the story he tells. Instead, the human dimensions of warfare are clearly placed within the geopolitical structures shaping the struggle, and individual experience is located within larger, panoramic contexts.

The Seven Years’ War would never have assumed global dimensions had it not been driven by European rivalries, but Mr. Anderson focuses on the North American aspects of the conflict. He argues that the American conflict cannot be understood unless one recognizes the tripartite nature of the struggle for control of the continent among England, the French, and the Indian tribes. The match that lit the tinder was the murder of one American Indian by another during a wilderness truce parley, to which a callow George Washington in his first military command was privy.

Despite Native Americans’ continued vulnerability to European diseases and their dependence on Europeans for firearms and metal tools, they entered the conflict holding a strategic card. Europeans may have outnumbered the natives, but the latter still occupied most of the continent’s real estate. While the European powers saw each other as the principal adversary, Indian proxies remained the best way to get at one’s enemy across the wilderness that separated New France from Britain’s mainland colonies. Indian diplomacy accordingly became critical to both powers.

Once the war had begun, two factors were crucial in commanding Indian loyalties: access to European goods (either through gifts or trade) and protection of Indian lands from white encroachment. When circumstances forced the Indian to chose, the first usually trumped the second, at least temporarily. Once one of the European powers was able to deny its rivals the ability to supply its Indian allies, it would gain the decisive advantage.

Britain’s capture of Louisbourg on Cape Breton and the destruction of Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario during 1758, followed the next year by the fall of Quebec, achieved just that, because France’s access to the interior tribes depended on control of the St. Lawrence. Britain was less vulnerable because she had multiple – if less convenient – routes to the interior.

She also enjoyed a decisive demographic advantage in North America, though political obstacles initially crippled her ability to capitalize on that. Division among the separate colonies, combined with the arrogance of British officialdom, prevented effective deployment of her superior resources. General Braddock’s attempt to attack Fort Duquesne (modern Pittsburgh) without adequate Indian scouts resulted in a military disaster that was matched politically by Lord Loudoun’s unsuccessful attempts to exercise centralized control over the colonial governments.

Britain began to respond creatively only after repeated defeats in the conflict’s first three campaigns put William Pitt in charge of her war effort. Pitt perceived the advantage Britain enjoyed in North America and appealed to the colonists’ pocketbooks, reinforced by their Protestant loyalties, to strike decisively at the periphery of Catholic France’s empire.The results were an unprecedented mobilization of colonial manpower that supported military forces from Britain in delivering a string of decisive victories beginning in 1758.

In the peace of 1763, which brought the struggle to a conclusion, France regained the West Indian Islands it had lost to Britain’s superior navy, but at the cost of renouncing all its claims to continental North America and most of its influence in South Asia. In addition, Spain paid dearly for her late entry into the war in captured specie and the cession of Spanish Florida to Britain. Mr. Anderson argues, however, American Indians were the biggest losers. The war had turned the European population of North America into unrestrained Indian haters, even as the Indians lost the capacity to play Britain and France against each other.

Without this new state of affairs the American Revolution would not have begun a mere dozen years later. Not only did the revolutionaries assume Britain was diplomatically vulnerable, they also counted on turning to good account the military skills that they had acquired in supporting the British against the French. Britain’s victory left France thirsting for revenge and the other European powers far more receptive to cooperating against Britain than they might otherwise have been.

Besides stressing the role of the American Indian in the conflict,Mr.Anderson’s account is distinctive for its sensitivity to the misperceptions of key players and the unintended consequences arising from their actions. He shows how the series of missteps leading to Washington’s surrender of Fort Necessity near Pittsburgh on July 3, 1754, provided France with an excuse for formally declaring war.

By demonstrating “the unpredictability and irony that always attend the pursuit of power,” Mr. Anderson’s story acquires a “cautionary” quality. But military history buffs who prefer less qualified descriptions of human efficacy should not be put off. Mr. Anderson also has a keen appreciation for military genius.

The three military men who come off best in his account are John Bradstreet, the architect of the destruction of Fort Frontenac in 1758; John Forbes, who through astute Indian diplomacy captured Fort Dusquesne without firing a shot that same year, and Thomas Wolfe, who both at Louisbourg and Quebec displayed a capacity for moving his troops safely into positions his adversaries assumed were inaccessible and had neglected to fortify.

This book’s richly illustrated text also makes it a fitting companion piece to a television series on the Seven Years’ War that will be broadcast early next year. But who needs television? In the course of reading this book, which can easily be digested in a day, I had difficulty finding convenient places at which to pause.

Mr. Buel is the author of “America on the Brink: How the Political Struggle Over the War of 1812 Almost Destroyed the Young Republic.”