The first biography of Charles Cornwallis in forty years?the soldier, governor, and statesman whose career covered America, India, Britain, and IrelandCharles, First Marquis of Cornwallis (1738–1805), was a leading figure in late eighteenth-century Britain. His career spanned the American War of Independence, Irish Union, the French Revolutionary Wars, and the building of the Second British Empire in India?and he has long been associated with the unacceptable face of Britain’s colonial past.