Helen Julia Paul

Editorial: Women in economic and social history: twenty-fifth anniversary of the Women's Committee of the Economic History Society

A history of womens contribution to the Economic History Society and the Economic History Review. Includes data about a) the number of women publishing in the Review and b) womens membership of the EHS

Review of periodical literature published in 2012

Review of periodical literature published in 2012 which concerns economic and social history of Britain and Ireland in the period 1500-1700

Review of periodical literature published in 2012: Review of Periodical Literature

Review of periodical literature published in 2012 which concerns economic and social history of Britain and Ireland in the period 1500-1700

Review of periodical literature published in 2012 (iii) 1500-1700

Review of periodical literature published in 2012 which concerns economic and social history of Britain and Ireland in the period 1500-1700

Eighteenth-century Britain: the quintessential ‘contractor state’?

Over the last two decades or so, naval historians have taken their place among the large number of scholars seeking to explore and explain the relationship between war and the development of the state from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth century. In particular, much attention has been focused on the reasons that underpinned Britain’s long-term success which saw it eventually emerge as the world’s unrivalled leading power by 1820, and many comparisons and contrasts have been made between the British “way in war” and the ways in war that were pursued by rival European powers and others. As this has happened, much consideration – indeed, perhaps too much consideration – has been devoted to the administrative, bureaucratic and economic factors that influenced the military performance of states, and it has been acknowledged that the British state was able to adapt its internal government systems and structures so that they could cope at least reasonably well with the heavy demands imposed by recurrent and increasingly global warfare. This is not to say that historians have advanced arguments in favour of some crude form of British “exceptionalism.” Rather, they have identified elements of state formation that were evident across Europe but perhaps most sharply and effectively formed in Britain. At the heart of the debate has been a discussion of the emergence of what is known as the “fiscal-military state” in Europe. Although much excellent work on British taxation, fiscal policy and government borrowing had already been done, most notably by P.G.M. Dickson, it was the publication in 1989 of John Brewer’s The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688-1783 (London, 1989) that gave renewed vigour to the debate about the characteristics and form of European states and their performance during times of war. Brewer’s book exploded several myths as it explored the British case in a wide-ranging manner, but at its core was a focus on the state’s ability to raise money by taxation and, especially, through public loans; and it exam-