`The book is a distinguished work - of importance not just to eighteenth-century specialists but also to students of governmental development generally. Though authoritative and historically sophisticated, it is written in a fluent and non technical manner that should reach a wide audience. It even has a first-rate index.' - American Historical Review
` ... a radical, but wholly convincing, reinterpretation of the Georgian state ... Brewer's elegant analysis shows how parliament itself, then as today, readily serves as a most effective engine for the centralisation of power.' - New Statesman and Society
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.
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