Stephen Conway - Böcker

This book examines a hitherto neglected aspect of the War of American Independence, providing the first wide-ranging account of the impact of this eighteenth-century conflict upon the politics, economy, society and culture of the British Isles. The author examines the level of military participation - which was much greater than is usually appreciated - and explores the war's effects on subjects as varied as parliamentary reform, religious toleration and attitudes to empire. The books casts new light upon recent debate about the war-waging efficiency of the British state, and on the role of war in the creation of a sense of 'Britishness'. The thematic chapters are supplemented by local case studies of six very different communities the length and breadth of the British Isles.

This is the eighth volume of the Correspondence produced in the new edition of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. Nearly three-quarters of the letters included in this eighth volume of Correspondence have not been previously published.During the years covered by this volume, Bentham's Panopticon penitentiary scheme was finally rejected by the government; and his efforts to secure its implementation, and then to gain adequate compensation, form a major and recurring theme. But the letters do much more than complete the Panopticon saga. They give an insight into Bentham's relations with his editors and followers Étienne Dumont and James Mill, and provide information on the writing, editing, and in some cases, printing and publishing of works on law, politics, religion, and education. Just as important is the clear impression the correspondence gives of his contacts, especially with the legal and political reformers of the day. Prior to these new volumes, the only edition of Bentham's works was a poorly edited and incomplete one brought out within a decade or so of his death.

These letters - the vast majority of which have never been published before - illustrate many aspects of Bentham's public and private life. The composition, editing, printing, publishing, and reception of several of his writings are discussed, while the correspondence with his secretary and protégé John Herbert Koe gives a unique insight into Bentham's working methods. The proposed Chrestomathic School is the subject of many of the letters of 1820, though even in that year Bentham's involvement in the world of radical politics emerges clearly. The volume also testifies to his burgeoning international reputation, and to his interest in reform in North and South America, Russia, Spain, France, and Geneva.

This is the tenth volume of the Correspondence produced in the new edition of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. The great majority of the letters have never before been published. They illustrate the composition, editing, publication, and reception of several of his works. The volume reveals Bentham's attempts to influence developments in France, the USA, Greece, Spain, Portugal, and South America.Despite Bentham's importance as jurist, philosopher, and social scientist, and leader of the Utilitarian reformers, the only previous edition of his works was a poorly edited and incomplete one brought out within a decade or so of his death. This new critical edition of his works and correspondence is being prepared by the Bentham Committee of University College London.

Britannia's Auxiliaries provides the first wide-ranging attempt to consider the continental European contribution to the eighteenth-century British Empire. The British benefited from many European inputs - financial, material, and, perhaps most importantly, human. Continental Europeans appeared in different British imperial sites as soldiers, settlers, scientists, sailors, clergymen, merchants, and technical experts. They also sustained the empire from outside - through their financial investments, their consumption of British imperial goods, their supply of European products, and by aiding British imperial communication. Continental Europeans even provided Britons with social support from their own imperial bases. The book explores the means by which continental Europeans came to play a part in British imperial activity at a time when, at least in theory, overseas empires were meant to be exclusionary structures, intended to serve national purposes. It looks at the ambitions of the continental Europeans themselves, and at the encouragement given to their participation by both private interests in the British Empire and by the British state. Despite the extensive involvement of continental Europeans, the empire remained essentially British. Indeed, the empire seems to have changed the Europeans who entered it more than they changed the empire. Many of them became at least partly Anglicized by the experience, and even those who retained their national character usually came under British direction and control. This study, then, qualifies recent scholarly emphasis on the transnational forces that undermined the efforts of imperial authorities to maintain exclusionary empires. In the British case, at least, the state seems, for the most part, to have managed the process of continental involvement in ways that furthered British interests. In this sense, those foreign Europeans who involved themselves in or with the British Empire, whatever their own perspective, acted as Britannia's auxiliaries.

Britain's separateness from the rest of Europe is often taken as read. For generations, historians have presented Britain as exceptional and different. In recent years an emphasis on the Atlantic and imperial aspects of British history, and on the importance of the nation and national identity, has made Britain and Ireland seem even more distant from the neighbouring Continent. Stephen Conway's study offers a different perspective on eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland's relationship with continental Europe. It acknowledges areas of difference and distinctiveness, but points to areas of similarity. It accepts that both Britain and Ireland were part of an Atlantic and wider imperial world, but highlights their under-recognized connections with the rest of Europe. And, perhaps most ambitiously of all, it suggests that if the British and Irish thought and acted in national terms, they were also able, in the appropriate circumstances, to see themselves as Europeans.Other historians have opened up parts of this subject, presenting a more rounded picture than exceptionalist narratives allow, stressing convergence rather than divergence, establishing important connections and exploring their ramifications; but none have attempted such a panoramic view. Conway presents a case for our regarding eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland as integral parts of Europe, and for our appreciating that this was the perspective of many of the British and Irish at the time.

This book explores the impact of the wars of 1739-63 on Britain and Ireland. The period was dominated by armed struggle between Britain and the Bourbon powers, particularly France. These wars, especially the Seven Years War of 1756-63, saw a considerable mobilization of manpower, materiel and money. They had important affects on the British and Irish economies, on social divisions and the development of what we might term social policy, on popular and parliamentary politics, on religion, on national sentiment, and on the nature and scale of Britain's overseas possessions and attitudes to empire.To fight these wars, partnerships of various kinds were necessary. Partnership with European allies was recognized, at least by parts of the political nation, to be essential to the pursuit of victory. Partnership with the North American colonies was also seen as imperative to military success. Within Britain and Ireland, partnerships were no less important. The peoples of the different nations of the two islands were forced into partnership, or entered into it willingly, in order to fight the conflicts of the period and to resist Bourbon invasion threats. At the level of 'high' politics, the Seven Years War saw the forming of an informal partnership between Whigs and Tories in support of the Pitt-Newcastle government's prosecution of the war. The various Protestant denominations - established churches and Dissenters - were brought into a form of partnership based on Protestant solidarity in the face of the Catholic threat from France and Spain. And, perhaps above all, partnerships were forged between the British state and local and private interest in order to secure the necessary mobilization of men, resources, and money.

This book examines a hitherto neglected aspect of the War of American Independence, providing the first wide- ranging account of the impact of this eighteenth-century conflict upon the politics, economy, society, and culture of the British Isles. The author examines the level of military participation - which was much greater than is usually appreciated - and explores the war's effects on subjects as varied as parliamentary reform, religious toleration, and attitudes to empire. The book casts new light upon recent debate about the war-waging efficiency of the British state and the role of war in the creation of a sense of 'Britishness'. The thematic chapters are supplemented by local case-studies of six very different communities the length and breadth of the British Isles.

This collection of essays aims to respond to Charles Sellers's ""The Market Revolution"", reflecting upon the historiographic accomplishments initiated by his work, while advancing the argument across a range of fields. It explores the impact of the market on social and economic institutions.

The American war against British imperial rule (1775-1783) was the world's first great popular revolution. Ideologically defined by the colonists' formal Declaration of Independence in 1776, the struggle has taken on something of a mythic character. From the Boston Tea Party to Paul Revere's ride to raise the countryside of New England against the march of the Redcoats; and from the American travails of Bunker Hill (1775) to the final humiliation of the British at Yorktown (1781), the entire contest is now emblematic of American national identity. Stephen Conway shows that, beyond mythology, this was more than just a local conflict: rather a titanic struggle between France and Britain. The Thirteen Colonies were merely one frontline of an extended theatre of operations, with each superpower aiming to deliver the knockout blow. This bold new history recognizes the war as the Revolution but situates it on the wider, global canvas of European warfare.

Much has been written about the British army's campaigns during the many wars it fought in the eighteenth century, but for over 150 years no one has attempted to produce a history of the army as an institution during this period. That is why Stephen Conway's perceptive and detailed study is so timely and important. Taking into account the latest scholarship, he considers the army's legal status, political control and administration, its system of recruitment, the relationships between officers and men, and the social and economic as well as constitutional interactions of the army with British and other societies.Throughout the book a key theme is order and control. How did a small number of officers exercise authority over large numbers of common soldiers? Traditionally the answer has focused on the role of a draconian system of corporal and capital punishment - by extensive use of the lash and the rope. Yet no institution can function through fear alone and he shows that the obedience of its common soldiers had to be negotiated by their officers who were very aware of their men's sense of their entitlements, and their conception of military service as contractual.By uncovering the mental world of both officers and common soldiers, Stephen Conway offers a very different view of how the British army operated between the Hanoverian succession and the end of the War of American Independence. His work will be fascinating reading for all students of British military history.