Sinews of Power

John Brewer is Director of the Center for Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Studies and Director of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Brewer poses another question of great importance…how did a small island, of no great population, and which had, for the most part, played an insignificant role in seventeenth-century Europe, transform itself, in the space of sixty years, into a great naval power with an immense empire? Brewer is to be congratulated [on] here identifying a major theme and pursuing it with great skill.

• List of Tables and Figures Preface Introduction PART I 1. Before the Revolution: The English State in the Medieval and Early Modern Eras PART II 2. Patterns of Military Effort 3. Civil Administration: The Central Offices of Government 4. Money, Money, Money: The Growth in Debts and Taxes PART III 5. The Paradoxes of State Power PART IV 6. The Parameters of War 7. War and Taxes PART V 8. The Politics of Information: Public Knowledge and Private Interest Conclusion Notes Index