Reviews 239 financial support of France and Spain. Both France and Spain had their own interests in mind as they agreed to this support. Following the Seven Years War and their significant losses in the 1763 Treaty of Paris, both countries sought to restore the balance of power in Europe by reducing the strength of Britain. By the end of the war, the two countries had given the equivalent of almost $30 billion in direct monetary aid and had helped to supply more than 90% of the arms used by the Americans. Furthermore, as Ferreiro emphasizes, their support had turned a distant regional conflict into a global war involving multiple European nations, as well as French and Spanish forces in places such as Honduras, Gibraltar, Pondicherry and the Kingdom of Mysore, which had weakened Britain’s military and political strength and, ultimately, led to its defeat:“The real story is that the American nation was born as the centerpiece of an international coalition” (336). As the subtitle of this work indicates, Ferreiro gives special attention throughout to the French and Spanish men who offered their services to the American war, citing by name innumerable merchants, ministers, soldiers and sailors, and providing fascinating details of their lives and their contributions to the war. Describing the trading firm of Arthur and Jean-Gabriel Montaudouin in Nantes who supplied covert arms shipments to Philadelphia, Ferreiro notes that the names of their ships, the Jean-Jacques and the Contrat Social, revealed their sympathy for the Enlightenment philosopher and for the ideals of the American cause (39). Speaking of the new governor of Louisiana, Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, Ferreiro adds that he“endeared himself to the French Creole population by marrying one of their own, Marie Félice de Saint-Maxent d’Estrehan, with whom he had three children” (133). In addition to providing colorful and intriguing anecdotes, these human-interest details add important recognition of individuals to the historical record. From its concise discussion of the events leading up to the war, to a detailed and illuminating account of the war itself and of the legacy of the French and Spanish involvement, Brothers at Arms is an exceedingly well-researched and highly readable revision of the history of the American War of Independence. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of American, French, and Spanish history, political science, and military science and technology. Northern Arizona University Erika E. Hess Gunthert, André. L’image partagée: la photographie numérique. Paris: Textuel, 2015. ISBN 978-2845975309. Pp. 176. Gunthert sets out to pioneer the field of digital images. Thus, it is in the novel role of historian of the present (7) that he retraces each step of the transformation from film camera to digitalization in a credible account. He signals both the social and technological milestones, such as the images from Abu Ghraib, and the decision to market cellphones equipped with digital cameras. Gunthert has accomplished a feat because the iconography reproduced in the book adequately covers the years roughly from 1990 to 2014. If the use of digital photography was groundbreaking during these years, Gunthert’s examples constitute a canon. He underscores furthermore that the break with tradition has taken place thanks to the digitalization of the image because until now photographs have come down to us in the form of prints. For Gunthert, this change is conclusive. A revolution creates the possibility to ease the production and circulation of images between people at a scale never seen before. In combating the rise of an army of citizen journalists, photojournalists claimed the esthetic superiority of images made by professionals. Gunthert argues that this claim misses the point because images made by amateurs offer the public a different way to look at the world. Quality and framing of the image may suffer, yet digital images can and do fulfill an important need. Images, such as those from Abu Ghraib prison, show us events we would have never seen otherwise. Digital photography can capture episodes, such as a catastrophe, that no photojournalist had the chance to witness. Gunthert also refutes the charge that digital images are unreliable because they are so...
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Jan 1, 2019
M Pilar Matud 
Open Access
