Book Review:

The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688-1783, by John Brewer

Nickolas Herman

English 738

Prof. Felicity Nussbaum

November 21, 1995

The conservative and progressive understandings of imperialism (to posit a rather imprecise binary), for all their opposition to one another over who is to blame for the sufferings imperialism causes and how it has been, hasn't been, or should be changed, share at least one significant similarity in their general approaches to the subject: both camps often view imperialism as a system driven chiefly by free and unrestrained market forces. For very different reasons, both conservatives and progressives have an ideological interest in portraying empire as the unfortunate result of laissez-faire economics and politics. Conservatives wish to distance global capitalism from the more brutal means of its implementation; progressives hope to rally support for greater regulation and political measures to rein in the forces of exploitation. To be sure, progressives are more likely to see a complicity between commercial and political power. Yet by neglecting to directly examine the apparatus by which this pact functions, progressive critiques can imply an often illusory conspiracy or hijacking of power by exaggeratedly narrow elites, obscuring the actual developments that allowed imperialism to form. This leads much anti-imperialist discourse to articulate economic and political alternatives in unnecessarily vague terms, relying instead on a predominantly cultural and ethical grounding for their critique.

In this book, John Brewer offers a compelling alternative to the view that eighteenth-century England developed its imperial capacities in the absence of any strong and pervasive domestic political apparatus. Contrary to what he calls "the British liberal tradition" (Brewer xvii), for which the eighteenth century "exemplifies the weakness of central government" (Brewer xvii), Brewer argues that in fact a highly effective and powerful state was the chief reason for Britain's imperial successes. He writes,

"The late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw an astonishing transformation in British government, one which put muscle on the bones of the British body politic, increasing its endurance, strength, and reach....The creation of what [Brewer calls] 'the fiscal-military state' was the most important transformation in English government between the domestic reforms of the Tudors and the major administrative changes in the first half of the nineteenth century" (Brewer xvii).

The fiscal-military state was the true bedrock of British empire, but the process of its development involved "bookkeeping, not battles....Its focus is upon administration, on logistics, and above all, on the raising of money" (Brewer xvi).

Moreover, the vastness of this imperial project meant that it required markedly new configurations of power, which of necessity took forms more complicated than either traditional autocracy or egalitarian populism. The administrative and monetary policies that constituted the fiscal-military state exerted what Brewer calls "infrastructural power" as opposed to "despotic power" (Brewer xx). A close understanding of the confluence of innovations, coalitions, and pressures that shaped this infrastructure offers an excellent framework for discussions of eighteenth-century cultural and political developments; it can also illuminate the immediate conditions of imperialism's practical origin and thus provide a rich context for articulating alternative visions of polity and economy. Closely and comprehensively studying all the elements whose organization results in empire offers the best means by which imperial culture in general can be critiqued.

As he makes clear in the title, the inter-related elements of imperial society that Brewer emphasizes in this book are military, economic, and political. His main goal is to elaborate how England was able to convert its economic productivity into military might and thus achieve great-power and imperial status. As the practice of empire is inherently competitive, Brewer also seeks to explain not only why England was able to outpace its chief rivals (the French, Dutch, and Spanish) but why it attempted the hazardous and expensive project of such conquest. The final third of Brewer's goal is to elaborate the changes that the means of empire--the fiscal-military state--effected on English political and economic life.

The first of the book's five sections deals with those long-term conditions in England before 1688 which helped to lay the groundwork for the developments of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Brewer writes, "Though the fiscal-military state emerged as a result of a particular political crisis [war with Louis XIV], it had to exploit and accommodate itself to existing institutions" (Brewer 3). Brewer argues that the English state before 1688 was shaped by three major factors: medieval centralization, England's avoidance of European wars, and the absence of a strong class of venal or bribable administrators.

The centralization which Brewer refers to consisted of the ability of a strong monarch and parliament to control or at least guide the local power of feudal lords. The interdependency of monarch and parliament in matters of tax-collecting, judicial practice, and negotiating between central and local power "meant that from a very early date political conflict in England was very highly centralized" (Brewer 5). The combination of monarch and parliament proved to be--at least within England, though less so in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland--by far the most effective governing mechanism during this period, and was usually only strengthened by the conflicts over who would control it. This ascendant central power had the long-term benefit of suppressing the growth of regional power bases. In contrast, regional power was highly developed during the same period in France; the French Valois monarchy was much later than the English in consolidating itself and "could only superimpose its control on a number of entrenched and thriving institutions" (Brewer 6).

The other two conditions Brewer cites are interconnected: England's freedom from major European wars made it much easier to avoid the development of an entrenched class of administrative officers. Brewer writes that "between the end of The Hundred Years' War (1453) and the outbreak of hostilities with Louis XIV in 1689, England ceased to be a major military power in Europe" (Brewer 7). This period of over two hundred years in which England did not play an international role requiring much warfare had a great impact on the type of state it had. Because tax-collecting efforts were made difficult by the strength of regional interests, French monarchs requiring immediate funds during war crises often resorted to the sale of administrative offices. For a lump sum, affluent citizens could purchase the right to collect a tax or enforce a regulation and hence derive a long-term income often exceeding their initial investment. This sale of offices, motivated chiefly by the survival interests of European monarchical dynasties, thus had the dual long-term disadvantages of a net loss in revenue and the reinforcement of an administrative class only weakly controlled by the crown. England's avoidance of the pitfalls of state debts and venal officeholders derived mainly from its respite from massive military commitments, and made later attempts to form a centrally controlled state all the more successful.

In part II, Brewer describes the "sinews of power," that is, the actual structures of the fiscal-military state that began forming with the renewal of major European military involvement after 1688. With this renewed war with France and other powers,

"The [British] state's military role made it the most important single factor in the domestic economy: the largest borrower and spender, as well as the largest single employer....The civilian administration supporting the military effort burgeoned; taxes and debts increased" (Brewer 27).

The three main components of the fiscal-military apparatus are described in great detail, each receiving a chapter. They include the military buildup, the administrative apparatus which conducted the business of the state, and the financial system of high debts and high taxes.

The British military buildup of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries should be viewed in the context of an overall increase in scale. In Brewer's words, "between 1680 and 1780 the British army and navy trebled in size" (Brewer 29). Yet several important patterns guided this increase. One was the presence of a "blue water" philosophy which held that Britain, as an island nation of commerce, should rely on a strong navy. (In fact, the British navy did receive a relatively high priority compared to other nations' navies.) A corollary of this philosophy was that while a navy could defend legitimate interests of British subjects, armies were viewed as potential instruments of domestic tyranny. Strong pressure was thus exerted by Parliament to subject the army to civilian control. The success of this pressure, combined with mainly volunteer-based military service and a British war-making infrastructure more efficient than other European nations' (and hence less bulky and obtrusive), meant that the British people were relatively sheltered from the military machine they were building. Brewer writes, "[The British people] wanted military glory without what they saw as European militarism. And to a very large extent they got it" (Brewer 60).

The second major branch of the fiscal-military infrastructure was civil administration. The sheer number of bureaucrats increased dramatically during this era, and for the most part functioned very effectively. As Brewer puts it, "this [administrative] body came into being and was nurtured as the means by which civil society was put in harness to the juggernaut of state power" (Brewer 64). Although older institutions, for various reasons, could not be simply abolished, the new administrative structures formed were generally more modern in their operations: sinecures were limited, strict rules of discipline and oversight were built into new procedures, and the use of salaries replaced the less controllable fee system. The goal was to create a civil service which was, as an institution, loyal to and in service of a central authority under which officials "became attached to a distinctive administrative order as servants of the crown" (Brewer 85). British administration was thus an admixture of older, less efficient branches with newer, centrally controlled, and highly powerful ones. The epitome of the new was the Excise Office, the strongest of the revenue departments which were "the solid core around which all subsequent expansion was built" (Brewer 67).

The purpose of this administrative capacity was to carry out the third main function of the fiscal-military state: raising money. The supreme value of reliable tax revenue to a military state is that it obtains credit by making possible the stable and long-term payment of interest on massive war debts. It was in its ability to generate a high-volume and steady tax revenue that Britain outpaced the French and Dutch states. Brewer's account of the struggles over just how to create this revenue offers a fascinating picture of the competing interest groups and philosophies of English nationhood. The eventual choice to serve as the primary tax was the excise, valued chiefly for the efficiency and centralized administration of the Excise Office and the ease of its applicability (as a tax on consumer goods like beer, candles, and soap). Concerns about the excise included its ubiquitous intrusiveness as "the monster with ten thousand eyes" (Brewer 113), and its disproportionate impact on the middle and lower classes. Nevertheless, the heavy excise-based tax burden was accepted more or less peacefully by the English people, and was generally felt to be accountable and fair (largely because of the extremely accurate and publicly available records of the Excise Office).

Part III of the book deals with the political crisis that impelled Britain to undertake the gigantic task of the fiscal-military state. The main impetus which drove Britain into the Nine Years' War of 1689-1697 was the need to defend the results of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Under Louis XIV, France threatened to dominate the balance of power on the continent, and active French support for the reinstatement of James II meant that in order to preserve the financial, political, and religious liberties only recently won it was decided that England must once again become a European power. Seen in this light, the Nine Years' War resembles a "war of English succession" (Brewer 141), but one which involves international power struggles.

There were, however, complications to this mission of national defense. As Brewer writes, "The Glorious Revolution was not only a Protestant but a 'country' revolution, concerned both to preserve the true faith as England's official religion and to reduce the powers of central government" (Brewer 142). As was widely recognized at the time, however, the waging of war required massive amounts of revenue and expense; hence Cicero's maxim "The sinews of War are infinite money" (Brewer Headnote). The central administration and heavy tax burden required to wage war against France seemed to threaten a renewal of autocracy, and to endanger the very liberties the Glorious Revolution had sought to secure. The resolution of this crisis was found in a new consensus, a compromise as to how best to serve the interests of the nation: "the focus of opposition to the fiscal-military state gradually shifted away from the attempt to secure its abolition to a policy of containment" (Brewer 143). This containment took many forms, including significant and unprecedented restraints on the new Hanoverian monarch; an emphasis on the excise tax which favored the landowning class; and a new status for tax collection as the site of contention for political power. This compromise was not idyllic, but for the most part it held together and allowed the project of the fiscal-military state to move ahead.

Having described in parts one through three how and why the fiscal-military state was created, the last two sections deal with its overall effects on the nature of English society. Part Four examines the changes in the two spheres most affected by the new state: war and economic life. The general population's perceptions of and reactions to war were interwoven with what came to be widely understood as its economic consequences. Brewer uses the term "mercantilist" (Brewer 169), with some qualification, to describe British political economy. "Blue water" thinking, in which military success both created and was in turn supported by economic prosperity, gained wide currency. War and commerce were in this sense closely connected. For example, the absence of a continental war to absorb French resources posed great risks to British naval strength, and thus to British trade. In a similar conflation of formerly unassociated factors, consumer confidence was felt to strongly influence the ability of the state to collect taxes, and hence to borrow, making both heavy consumption and pervasive excise taxes on that consumption matters of military security.

New inter-relations such as these, along with national infrastructures of finance and transport, brought a strong and direct sense of national economic integration to all classes. War affected everything from the price of beer to the cost of shipping insurance, the wages of sailors, and the value of large land holdings, and thus became part of long-term economic sensibilities. Moreover, the burgeoning markets in government securities created an entirely new sphere of economic activity which had to be assimilated into the cultural framework. Every class--and several new ones, such as the financiers, bond-traders, and bankers--had to struggle with new and often contradictory economic roles. Eventually, however, the economic realities of the fiscal-military state, including high government debts, volatile yet often highly profitable market swings, and heavy taxes shouldered mainly by the average consumer, were more or less accepted as necessary conditions and integrated into British life.

In the book's final section, Brewer deals with the altered status of the public sphere. The new technology of information, based on highly detailed, organized, and retrievable record-keeping, led to what Brewer calls "a change in perception, the growth of a new vision of state and society" (Brewer 229). This new information meshed with an emerging faith in numerical quantification as a means of acquiring legitimate social and political knowledge. The records of the various administrations were used to make cases for and against proposed taxes, to document the harm or benefit to various groups of any particular legislation, to confirm the efficiency or corruption of state offices, and to make tangible the overall well-being of the society. The credibility of government statistics both ensured consumer confidence and the faith of lenders in the government's ability to pay interest on its loans. Information, often statistical, possessed "the power, in the eyes of eighteenth-century observers, to produce precision, certainty and security out of seeming chaos and disorder" (Brewer 229).

Given that the new forms of information were a highly respected criterion for ordering British society, access to that information rapidly became the object of political debate and conflict. The practice of lobbying reached new and more refined levels, as every interest group used new and largely public information to advance its interests. Not only were statistics used to petition parliament, but they became means by which political arguments were directed at a wider public. As administrative departments became more protective of their records, and the assistance of parliament became more necessary to groups seeking access, Brewer writes that "lobbyists responded by transforming their arguments to give them a broader appeal" (Brewer 246). One particularly clear example of this was a 1733 case against a tobacco tax, presented by its advocates as harmful to the national interest. Brewer argues that "The issue...had been universalized. It was no longer a matter of a contest between the government and sectional interests adjudicated by the legislature; it had been recast as a struggle between the state and its subjects judged by the general public" (Brewer 247). This new rhetorical site of political contention--a public sphere grounded in new forms of information--though by no means free of private influence and great inequalities, represents for Brewer eighteenth-century Britain's fundamental mode of engagement between state and public. The social organizations and attitudes which took form in this altered environment embodied the political life of the era.

Clearly, Brewer's analysis of the British imperial state relies heavily on economic and military arguments and evidence, with little or no discussion of strictly cultural factors. Yet this emphasis may be best understood as serving an inclusive rather than an exclusive purpose. In his introduction, Brewer writes that he seeks "to put finance, administration, and war at the centre stage of the drama...without elbowing other performers into the wings" (Brewer xi). He is speaking in particular of the free market and English battlefield history, but the argument can be equally applied to issues most relevant to humanistic studies. This book seeks not to offer a limiting diagnosis of imperial society, but to make more concrete the easily obscured mechanism of state administration. This analysis offers specific and historically precise economic context in which to ground cultural or literary critiques.

Ultimately, to read Brewer's assertion of a reorganized public sphere--probably the most controversial of his claims--as some bourgeois idyll amounts to an unnecessary rejection of this argument's potential for illuminating the character of eighteenth-century literary, cultural, and political life. The observation that politics became more "public" hardly exonerates the results of those politics, or implies that any utopian consensus existed. As Brewer makes clear, the reactions of the British people to the newly powerful state institution were shifting and often contradictory; diverse interests competed against each other to benefit from the state's resources and there was constant conflict over whether and how to restrict state power. Acknowledging that the practice of empire in the eighteenth-century was far from a hegemonic doctrine, while clearly requiring that rigorous revision be distinguished from nostalgia, can offer a significantly more comprehensive terrain for scholarly and cultural investigation.

All citations from:

Brewer, John. The Sinews of Power, Alfred A. Knopf Inc., New York, 1989.