Jonathan Scott. Review of Braddick, J. Michael, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the English Revolution. H-Albion, H-Net Reviews. January, 2016. -- downloaded pdf to Note

Drawing on the complete range of printed and manuscript sources, Empire and Revolution offers a vivid reconstruction of the major concerns of this outstanding statesman, orator, and philosopher.In restoring Burke to his original political and intellectual context, this book strips away the accumulated distortions that have marked the reception of his ideas. In the process, it overturns the conventional picture of a partisan of tradition against progress. In place of the image of a backward-looking opponent of popular rights, it presents a multifaceted portrait of one of the most captivating figures in eighteenth-century life and thought. While Burke was a passionately energetic statesman, he was also a deeply original thinker. Empire and Revolution depicts him as a philosopher-in-action who evaluated the political realities of the day through the lens of Enlightenment thought, variously drawing on the ideas of such figures as Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Hume. A boldly ambitious work of scholarship, this book challenges us to rethink the legacy of Burke and the turbulent era in which he played so pivotal a role. -- Richard Bourke is professor in the history of political thought and codirector of the Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of Peace in Ireland: The War of Ideas and the coeditor of Political Judgement. -- Big early chunk on Vindication of Natural Society -- TOC and Intro (24 pgs) downloaded to Note

Dan Bogart, Department of Economics, UC Irvine - : “There Can Be No Partnership with the King”: Regulatory Commitment and the Tortured Rise of England’s East Indian Merchant Empire: “The English East India Company helped build Britain’s colonial empire, but the Company was not a leader in East Asian trade for nearly a century after its founding in 1600. This paper argues that its early performance was hindered by a problem of regulatory commitment. It gives a brief history of the torturous renegotiations over its monopoly trading privileges and the fiscal demands by the monarchy. It also analyzes the effects of political instability, warfare, and fiscal capacity on the Company’s investment in shipping tonnage. Regressions show the growth of shipping tonnage declined significantly when there were changes in government ministers, when Britain was at war in Europe and North America, and when shipping capacity exceeded central government tax revenues. The findings point to the significance of regulatory institutions in Britain’s development and its links with politics and war. They also provide an important case where regulatory uncertainty lowers investment.” paper dated Jan 2015 -- downloaded pdf to Note

Cambridge University Press -- very enthusiastic review especially re the data Bowen uses, and purportedly will make available - data shows greater economic impact of trading with the East -- Bowen ends with qualified acceptance of "gentlemanly capitalism" thesis

PATRICK A. WALSH - University College, Dublin (& UCL post doc fellowship) -- This article examines the Irish fiscal-military state in the eighteenth century. It locates the Irish state within a broader imperial context showing how Ireland contributed to the wider British imperial project. In particular, this article looks at the development of an efficient tax-gathering apparatus, showing how the revenue board, the most pervasive agency of the eighteenth-century Irish state, extracted increasing levels of taxation from a sometimes hostile population. Drawing extensively on the records of the Irish revenue commissioners, a very rich if under utilized source, it demonstrates for the first time the levels of taxation raised in Ireland, while also exploring how these taxes were collected. It concludes that this period saw the expansion of an increasingly professional bureaucracy, challenging existing interpretations that have focused predominantly on politicization. The final section looks at issues of evasion and compliance, showing the difficulties faced by the Irish state in this period, as it expanded deeper into Irish society. -* I would like to thank Stephen Conway, Niamh Cullen, Julian Hoppit, Eoin Magennis, and Ivar McGrath, as well as the two anonymous readers, for their comments on earlier drafts.

John Locke, H.B. Fox Bourne, The Life of John Locke. In Two Volumes (London: Henry S. King, 1876). Vol. 2 pp. 363-372. 07/16/2014. <http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2332> -- Available as Facsimile PDF 352 KB This is a facsimile or image-based PDF made from scans of the original book -- Locke’s detailed proposals to encourage the Irish linen industry which was quoted in full in Fox Bourne’s The Life of John Locke (1876), vol. 2, pp. 363-372.

David Womersely, Liberty and American Experience in the Eighteenth Century, edited and with an Introduction by David Womersley (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2006). 07/13/2014. <http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1727> -- This volume is a collection of essays which examines some of the central themes and ideologies central to the formation of the United States including Edmund Burke’s theories on property rights and government, the influence of Jamaica on the American colonies, the relations between religious and legal understandings of the concept of liberty, the economic understanding of the Founders, the conflicting viewpoints between moral sense theory and the idea of natural rights in the founding period, the divisions in thought among the revolutionaries regarding the nature of liberty and the manner in which liberty was to be preserved, and the disparity in Madison’s political thought from the 1780s to the 1790s. -- authors include Jack Greene, David Wootton, Gordon Wood. -- downloaded pdf to Note

John Locke, A Letter concerning Toleration and Other Writings, edited and with an Introduction by Mark Goldie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2010). 07/13/2014. <http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2375> -- Part of the Thomas Hollis Library (series editor David Wormersley) published by Liberty Fund. This volume contains A Letter Concerning Toleration, excerpts of the Third Letter, An Essay on Toleration, and various fragments, including Constitution of Carolina excerpts, pamphlet debates e.g. with Samuel Parker. -- downloaded pdf to Note

John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856). 10 volumes. Vol. 4. 07/12/2014. <http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2102> -- A 10 volume collection of Adams’ most important writings, letters, and state papers, edited by his grandson. Vol. 4 contains Novanglus [history of the American colonies and their relations with Britain from 1754 to 1774], Thoughts on Government, and Defence of the Constitutions [descriptions of modern and ancient republics (categorized as democratic, aristocratic and, some ancient, as monarchic), and writings on the history and theories of forms of government by ancient and modern historians and philosophers. Lists Dr Swift as well as Hume -must have read 4 Last Years. -- downloaded pdf to Note

Original charter for proprietary colony to be governed by trustees -- And our will and pleasure is, that the first president of the said corporation is and shall be our trusty and well-beloved, the said Lord John Viscount Percival; ... And our will and pleasure is, and we, by these presents, for us, our heirs, and successors, grant, ordain, and direct, that the common council of this corporation shall consist of fifteen in number; and we do, by these presents, nominate, constitute, and appoint our right - trusty and well-beloved John Lord Viscount Percival, our trusty and beloved Edward Digby, George Carpenter, James Oglethorpe, George Heathcote, Thomas Laroche, James Vernon, William Beletha, esqrs., and Stephen Hales, Master of Arts, to be the common council of the said corporation, to continue in the said office during their good behavior. And whereas it is our royal intention, that the members of the said corporation should be increased by election, as soon as conveniently may be, to a greater number than is hereby nominated; Our further will and pleasure is, and we do hereby, for us, our heirs and successors, ordain and direct, that from the time of such increase of the members of the said corporation, the number of the said common council shall be increased to twenty-four; ...in order to preserve an indifferent rotation of the several offices, of president of the corporation, and of chairman of the common council of the said corporation we do direct and ordain that all and every the person and persons, members of the said common council for the time being, and no other, being present at such meetings, shall severally and respectively in their turns, preside at the meetings which shall from time to time be held of the said corporation, or of the common council of the said corporation respectively:

Fabulous summary by Noll of the different religious groups in 17thC England and the New England migrations -- Winship also challenges the many accounts of early-modern republicanism that have pictured it as an essentially secular ideology strongly inimical, with its all-out focus on worldly power, to the Puritans' strict Calvinism. Instead, he argues that the "godly republicanism" of early New England came directly from spiritual sources. The Puritans' greatest desire was to bring about biblical reform of churches corrupted by abuses of unchecked power. -- Explicitly Christian virtue thus grounded the health of the "commonwealth," an expressly republican term. Those scholars, including myself, who have described the republicanism of the Revolutionary era as secular may reply that the early Puritan arrangement was soon modified by the Puritans themselves and then completely abrogated when Massachusetts was taken over as a royal colony in 1684. But Winship nonetheless makes a strong case for a definite Christian root to the founding republican principles of the United States. This re-interpretation of early New England history hinges on careful discrimination among the different varieties of English and American Puritans. Never, one might think, has a scholar made so much of so little. Yet paying close heed to how he describes these Puritan varieties is, in the end, convincing. The following chart, which sets things out as an "invention" in the Ramist logic so beloved by the Puritans, summarizes those distinctions, though it would have clarified Winship's argument if he himself had provided such a scorecard.

Reviewed work(s): Carla Gardina Pestana. The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 1640–1661. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. Pp. 342. $49.95 (cloth). -- Alison Games, Georgetown University -- very high praise and helpful outline of how Pestana sees the Civil Wars and Interregnum as affecting migration, religion in the colonies and more intrusive governance from England

Explicitly not a biography - a mix of life political history and political culture of last half of 18thC -- added to Google_Books library - lots of full view copies on Google_Books - this from Czech Library looks in good shape

Historians have long maintained that the rise of the British empire brought an end to the great age of piracy, turning the once violent Atlantic frontier into a locus of orderly commerce by 1730. Guy Chet documents the persistence of piracy, smuggling, and other forms of illegal trade throughout the 18thC despite ongoing governmental campaigns to stamp it out. The failure of the Royal Navy to police oceanic trade reflected the state’s limited authority and legitimacy at port, in the courts, and in the hearts and minds of Anglo-American constituents. Chet shows how the traditional focus on the growth of the modern state overlooks the extent to which old attitudes and cultural practices continued to hold sway. Even as the British government extended its naval, legal, and bureaucratic reach, in many parts of the Atlantic world illegal trade was not only tolerated but encouraged. In part this was because Britain’s constabulary command of the region remained more tenuous than some have suggested, and in part because maritime insurance and wartime tax policies ensured that piracy and smuggling remained profitable. When Atlantic piracy eventually waned in the early 19thC, it had more to do with a reduction in its profitability at port than with forceful confrontation at sea. -- Jack Greene gives it high marks

Early paradigms in political anthropology identified formal government councils as a subject for cross-cultural comparison (structural functionalism) or as a political resource for goal-orientated actors (transactionalism). Recent concerns with power and regulation can also profit from a focus on local-level government councils by using them to explore the conceptual and empirical linkages between 'common sense' and 'governmentality'. In this article, as a point of entry, we highlight a key moment in the history of Britain's colonial and hegemonic project in Ireland, namely the orderly administrative transition from colony to state which occurred in Ireland after 1919. By constructing a historical narrative of a local government council in the southeast after 1850, and of its material and discursive bases, we show how the actions and ideologies of elite farmers were implicated in this orderly administrative transition and, therefore, how the concepts of governmentality, hegemony, and common sense might be linked. -- interesting discussion of 2nd half of 20thC shift from stucturalist-functionalist to transactionalism to seeing power everywhere but with different focus (Gramsci materialist and production of internally contradictory common sense) and Foucault (more discourse and self formation) with different views of verticality of power. With everything becoming political economic, loss of interest in governmental units that had been central to comparative stucturalist-functionalist system analysis.

With regard to public policy, in late seventeenth-century Britain there was a remarkable development of social statistics, what Petty called 'political arithmetic'. The general view, however, is that this new approach ended early in the eighteenth century only to be rediscovered by the early Victorian statistical movement. In fact, through the eighteenth century public policy continued to be considered partly in quantitative terms. This article explores some of the dimensions and peculiarities of this varied and extensive political arithmetic. -- downloaded pdf to Note

Extensive bibliography - primary and secondary literature -- downloaded pdf to Note

(1) Philanthropy and Police: London Charity in the Eighteenth Century by Donna T. Andrew; *--* (2) The Language of Liberty: Political Discourse and Social Dynamics in the Anglo-American World by J. C. D. Clark; *--* (3) Stilling the Grumbling Hive. The Response to Social and Economic Problems in England, 1689-1750 by L. Davison; *--* (4) Riot, Risings and Revolution. Governance and Violence in Eighteenth- Century England by Ian Gilmour; *--* (5) A Patriot Press. National Politics and the London Press in the 1740s by Robert Harris; *--* (6) Judging New Wealth. Popular Publishing and Responses to Commerce in England, 1750-1850 by James Raven; *--* (7)The Local Origins of Modern Society. Gloucestershire 1500-1800 by David Rollison; *--* (8) An Imperial State at War: Britain from 1689 to 1815 by Lawrence Stone; *--* (9) Protest and Survival: The Historical Experience. Essays for E. P. Thompson by John Rule; Robert Malcolmson -- downloaded pdf to Note

The rapid rise of England's colonial commerce in the late seventeenth century expanded the nation's resource base, stimulated efficiency improvements across the economy, and was important for long-term growth. However, close examination of the interests at play in England's Atlantic world does not support the Whiggish view that the Glorious Revolution played a benign role in this story. In the decades after the Restoration, the cases of the Royal African Company and the Spanish slave trade in Jamaica are used to show that the competition between Crown and Parliament for control of regulation constrained interest groups on either side in their efforts to capture the profits of empire. Stuart 'tyranny' was not able to damage growth and relatively competitive (and peaceful) conditions underpinned very rapid increases in colonial output and trade. The resolution of the rules of the Atlantic game in 1689 allowed a consolidated state better to manipulate and manage the imperial economy in its own interests. More secure rent-seeking enterprises and expensive wars damaged growth and European rivals began a process of catch-up. The Glorious Revolution was not sufficient to permanently halt economic development but it was sufficient to slow progress towards industrial revolution. -- very interesting attack on North-Weingast, Pincus et al -- paywall Wiley -- enormous bibliography on jstor information page

JSTOR: The American Political Science Review, Vol. 72, No. 2 (Jun., 1978), pp. 638-639 -- downloaded pdf to Note -- Finds Forbes writing and analysis both hopelessly confused -- some great stuff re where Hume sits vis à vis various flavors of Whigs, Tories and political historians at different times from 1740s onwards. Here's where Pocock's idée fixe on corrupting commerce is useful in explaining how the Essays fit with History of England -- not just against "vulgar Whiggism" (by time Hume wrote History based on Modern constitution theory of the Court Whigs, both oligarchic and radical Whigs had returned to Ancient Constitution) but pro the civilizing virtues of economic development. His target is the austere civic virtue of the republicans. Here's where Pocock misses -- Britain post Fletcher had few austere republicans - only found among idolators of Sparta on the Continent. That there was a luxury debate across the 18thC in both Continental Europe and Britain is clear, but it's not a debate re republicanism -- it's about the new "civil society", about foundation of morals if not biblicalrevelation or fear of hell, it's about human nature, and it's involved in comparative anthropology (geographic and historical) In short, it's about the science of man. Pocock's terrific observations re time, and the shift from anxiety re inevitable decline to possibility of progress fits in the science of man luxury and corruption debates that go far wider and deeper than classical republicanism. Though on Continent it takes on more of a republican angle after Montesquieu.

JSTOR: The American Historical Review, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Jan., 1932), pp. 269-272 -- Shelburne head of Board of Trade and "friend of the colonies" and opposed to Chatham ministry policies in aftermath of Stamp Act