The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688-1783 | 
 enlarge | Author: John Brewer
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $25.50
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Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 89283
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 0674809300
Dewey Decimal Number: 941.07
EAN: 9780674809307
ASIN: 0674809300
Publication Date: October 1, 1990
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Product Description
This powerful interpretation of English history provides a completely new framework for understanding how Britain emerged in the eighteenth century as a major international power. Brewers brilliant analysis makes clear that the drastic increase in Britain's military involvement (and success) in Europe and the expansion of her commercial and imperial interests would not have happened without a concurrent radical increase in taxation, along with a surge in deficit financing and the growth of a substantial public administration. Warfare and taxes reshaped the English economy, and at the heart of these dramatic changes lay an issue that is still very much with us today: the tension between a nation's aspirations to be a major power and fear of the domestic consequences of such an ambition--namely, the loss of liberty.
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 Table of Contents October 15, 2006
3 out of 9 found this review helpful
Table of Contents
List of Tables and Figures
Preface
Introduction
PART I
. Before the Revolution:
The English State in the Medieval and Early Modern Eras
PART II
. Patterns of Military Effort
. Civil Administration: The Central Offices of Government
. Money, Money, Money: The Growth in Debts and Taxes
PART III
. The Paradoxes of State Power
PART IV
. The Parameters of War
. War and Taxes
PART V
. The Politics of Information: Public Knowledge and Private Interest
Conclusion
Notes
Index
 A true work of real genius! November 28, 1999
28 out of 31 found this review helpful
"From its modest beginnings as... a minor, infrequent almost inconsequential participant in the great wars that ravaged sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe... Britain emerged in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries as the military Wunderkind of the age.... [B]y the reign of George III Britain had become one of the heaviest weights in the balance of power in Europe [and]... was on the threshold of becoming a transcontinental power..."The above quote is the opening of War, Money, and the English State. There have been many histories of Britain's military successes in the century after the expulsion of James II Stuart--biographies of the first Duke of Marlborough, histories of the British navy, narratives of the Seven Years' War, and so forth. There have been many histories of Britain's economic growth--and even attempts to explain why Britain saw such mercantile and then industrial success in the eighteenth century. But the connection? John Brewer takes on the task of filling in the gap: how was Britain's economic success translated into massive military power? This question is especially interesting because Britain appeared to successfully mobilize its resources for eighteenth century wars in a manner very different from the continental "absolutist" powers. The apparatuses of royal secret police, lits de justice, the co-option of the middle nobility in the centralization of power and authority, and the ideology of a king "freed from the duty of observing the laws" are in large part absent from British military mobilization. It followed a different pattern--one that may have had decisive consequences for human history... John Brewer handles his topic superbly, making The Sinews of Power one of the best books I read in 1991, and making it one of the best books I read in 1995, when I re-read it.
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