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A USE F U L H I S T ORY OF BR I TA I N
michael braddick
A USEFUL
HISTORY OF
BRITAIN
The Politics of Getting Things Done
1
1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Michael Braddick 2021
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2021
Impression: 1
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a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
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You must not circulate this work in any other form
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Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
For Sarah
ACKNOW LEDGEM EN T S
A s ever, I am grateful for the stimulating intellectual

community at the University of Sheffield but in this case
especially to my colleagues in SCEMS for allowing me the chance
to try out the arguments as I was finishing the book. I am also
indebted to Scott Ashley, Dan Beaver, John Moreland, Julia Moses,
Luciana O’Flaherty, Jill Pritchard, and Chris Wickham who read
drafts of the book: it is much improved as a consequence. For
advice on particular matters, and more general encouragement,
I am grateful to Adrian Bingham, Dominic de Cogan, Masashi
Haneda, Eliza Hartrich, Ian Mason, Paul Slack, John Snape, John
Walter, John Watts, and Charles West. Katharine Braddick read a
part of the book and listened to me talk about some of its
ambitions. Mark Greengrass pointed me towards the Marc Bloch
quotation which appears as an epigraph.
Finally, some more personal thanks: to Minnie, who encouraged
me to buy a book about Sutton Hoo, and to Cora and Mel who
showed polite and helpful interest. Above all, though, I am more
grateful than I can say to Sarah for her love and support in this, as
in so much else.
CON TEN T S
List of Illustrations xi
Introduction: From Stonehenge to Global Britain—

The History of Political Life on Britain 1
1. Political Life: Power Over Our World, Power Over

Each Other 14
2. Mobilizing Ideas and the Uses of Collective

Institutions 38
3. Material Conditions and the Uses of Collective

Institutions 70
4. Organizational Capacity and the Changing Limits

of the Possible 99
5. Geographies of Collective Institutions and

Identities: Which Groups Take Action for
What Purposes? 124
6. Political Inclusion: Who Makes Things Happen? 151
7. Change Over Time: Phases in the History of

Political Life 186
con t e n ts
Conclusion: Globalizing the British Past—Parallel

and Shared Histories 214
Notes 225
Picture Credits 235
Further Reading 237
Index 245
x
LI S T OF I LLUS TRAT IONS
1. Hadrian’s Wall 22
2. The Prince of Wales at the opening of the main
drainage works at Crossness, 1865 32
3. The Sutton Hoo helmet 50
4. Edward the Confessor (1042–1066)51
5. The consecration of Thomas Becket, 1162 60
6. Enslaved Africans cutting cane in Antigua, 1823 77
7. Mohandas Gandhi with textile workers in Darwen,
Lancashire, 1931 81
8. Manufacture of Merlin aircraft engines, 1942 97
9. London plague orders, 1665 105
10. Glasgow City Chambers 131
11. Anti-apartheid demonstration, Cardiff, 1969 143
12. Emmeline Pankhurst speaking 158
13. Gillray, The Voluptuary under the Horrors of Digestion, 1792161
14. The execution of the earl of Strafford, 1641 174
15. The Mangrove Café 178
16. David Cameron and the Prince of Wales among
world leaders at the signing of the Paris Climate
Agreement in 2015 211
Misunderstanding of the present is the inevitable consequence of

ignorance of the past. But a man may wear himself out just as
fruitlessly in seeking to understand the past, if he is totally
ignorant of the present.
Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft (Manchester, 1979 edn), p. 43
INTRODUCTION
From Stonehenge to Global Britain: The History
of Political Life on Britain
H umans have probably been on what is now Britain for around

900,000 years. For the vast bulk of that time they lived by
hunting and gathering, retreating south for long periods when the
ice advanced. The evidence of their lives is largely restricted to
their tools, traces of their camps, the bones of the animals they
ate. The oldest human remains are about 500,000 years old and,
towards the end of this very long period, we have traces of human
art, but there is very little evidence of the collective life of these
people. About 6,000 years ago, however, this changed very rapidly.
The widespread adoption of farming resulted in more settled
societies that left a much clearer mark on the landscape. That
evidence reveals almost immediately that late Neolithic (or Late
Stone Age) societies were capable of spectacular collective action.
Over the intervening 6,000 years people have acted together
in a great variety of ways to address many different challenges,
leaving a wealth of evidence about their collective action. So
what might we learn from this vast store of experience? This is a
critical question given the tone of much current political discus
sion, which is often pessimistic about our ability to meet collect
ive challenges such as climate change, pandemics, or managing
from stone he nge to globa l br ita in
the global economy. We have not benefited from the full range of
this past experience, however, because conventional histories of
Britain tend to focus on the origins of the UK and British national
identity. This book asks a simple but very different question: what
can we learn by thinking about how people in the past acted
together to get things done?
* * *
Some of the collective achievements of the late Neolithic are truly

remarkable. At Avebury in Wiltshire, for example, several square
miles have been transformed into a ritual landscape of impres
sive scale including a henge (circular ditch, bank, and stone circle)
and a huge mound, Silbury Hill: testament to the transformative
potential of collective action. Silbury Hill is 30 metres high and
160 metres wide, the largest such earthwork in Europe, and prob
ably dates from around 2400 bce. It is estimated that moving the
half a million tons of material it contains would have required
4 million person hours of work (perhaps 1,000 people working for
two years, supported by many others?). The full transformation
we can now see around Avebury must have required the mobiliza
tion and coordination of labour on a very large scale over several
generations and there is evidence of several stages of design and
re-design. Across the Salisbury plain, at Stonehenge, similarly
remarkable re-organization of the landscape took place. Here
the scale of organization reached far beyond the immediate
environs, not least in the stone settings, which date from around
2500 bce. Sixty or so bluestones, each weighing between 2 and 5
tons, were brought to the site from south-west Wales. The larger
sarsens, the biggest of which weighs 30 tons, were brought at
least 25 km.
2
Confronted by these remains, it is natural to wonder how it was

done. The scale of the achievement seems incredible given the
popular view of Stone Age societies, but these transformations
were clearly the product of complex societies with considerable
organizational capacity. We have no real idea who coordinated
this effort—which individual or group—or how they mobil
ized the necessary labour. We assume that this was a society in
which some individuals had greater power than others, but in the
absence of evidence we really know very little about it: it is hard to
say, for example, whether it was done cooperatively, coordinated
by people acting consensually in an egalitarian way, or by com
mand of people who dominated their society.
In later periods we can say much more about that and it is often
helpful to think about power along two axes: firstly, as the collective
capacity to, for example, build henges; and, secondly, as a relation
ship between those with the power to coordinate, control, and
command and those without it. Political life, in other words, gives
us power over our social and material world, but also power over
each other. Much of political history can be understood in these
terms, as a dialogue between the collective power to achieve things
together, and the differential power of those in control or coordin
ating positions. It is, for example, a way of understanding much
about the history of kings, priests, prime ministers, parliaments,
and tax officials.
As well as asking how it was done, visitors wonder why it
was done there: what was special about that place? That is a hard
question to answer, perhaps impossible. However, the site does
illustrate another general feature of political history: that past
decisions shape future action, in a process called path dependency.
There is evidence that this particular place had a ritual significance
3
much longer ago, perhaps before farming came to the island. We

are certain that not long after the arrival of farming, from around
5,500 years ago, it was redeveloped in several phases: once some
thing was placed there, it became a reason to continue to use
that site. Asking when Stonehenge was built is a bit like asking
when London was built, in other words—it was a site that was
continually developed and re-developed, in fact over a far longer
period than London has been there. But if we cannot say with any
certainty why this place was special, we can say that once it had
become recognized as such, later generations had reason to use it.
This is an important aspect of political history—how decisions
taken at one point create a path dependency which shapes action
in the future.
For most modern visitors the question of how Stonehenge was
built jostles for attention with the question of why it was built.
Here we have some quite good answers. The henge is clearly
aligned with the movements of the sun, for example, and the large
numbers of pigs’ teeth found at the site are all from animals of
an age that suggests they were slaughtered at mid-winter. In fact,
the scientific and interpretive brilliance of work on the site means
we have a better glimpse of the mobilizing ideas that produced
Stonehenge than of the social and political organization which
made it possible, or the path dependency that placed those mas
sive stones at that particular place.
We can also say something about the geography of the culture in
which it stood. There are strong connections between Stonehenge
and associated or similar remains elsewhere. The wider archaeo
logical record reveals clear links between continental Europe and
south-east Britain and between western Britain and the European
Atlantic seaboard. It is also clear that by this time influence could
4
spread southwards too. Domestic architecture seems to link the

buildings in the area around Stonehenge with those at Skara Brae in
the Orkneys, while the megalithic ritual architecture seems to have
been adopted earlier at the Ness of Brodgar than at Stonehenge,
and therefore to have spread southwards. On the other hand, the
later burial at Stonehenge of the ‘Amesbury archer’, a man who
grew up in Alpine Europe, suggests that it was an important site
or resource for people in the south too. In any case it is clearly a
site which connected the lives of people living far apart, and not
just on Britain. It offers a rare glimpse of a Neolithic culture with
much more than local significance.
Stonehenge has a wider context not just through these cultural
connections (a shared history) but also as an index of a parallel
history. This form of construction—circular banks and ditches
enclosing a stone circle—seems to have been distinctive to Britain,
but the construction techniques were not. Megalith building was
widespread in this period, reflecting a shared technological cap
acity, although not necessarily a shared pattern of social organiza
tion or world view. The same techniques were used to construct
different architectural forms that might have expressed quite dif
ferent beliefs. In that sense it is a parallel, as much as a shared his
tory, defined by similar levels of technological and organizational
capacity: the ability to use stone in this way, and the ability to
organize labour on the necessary scale.
As we have seen, the capacity to construct on this scale is asso
ciated with the emergence of agricultural societies—the common
assumption being that only human groups which had abandoned
hunting and gathering had the capacity (and perhaps will) to
undertake such projects. Farming and trade are associated with a
more complex division of labour and the movement of goods. The
5
many person hours devoted to projects like those at Stonehenge

and Avebury had somehow to be supported—at the very least
there must have been surplus food production, and a population
able to live on that surplus and undertake other tasks. Farming
greatly facilitated this kind of collective action.
This again illustrates a more general feature of political history:
that new skills and trades make new forms of collective action
possible. For example, the invention of printing created new pos
sibilities for governments in the sixteenth century, allowing the
dissemination of standardized information, or the gathering of
information in a standardized form. Similarly, the advent of the
internet has created the possibility of closer and more intimate
political communication, as well as surveillance. Facial recog
nition software, in fact, is thought to be such a dangerous thing
in the hands of political authorities that in 2019 the City of San
Francisco banned its use by public agencies. In both cases new
technologies developing independently of government have
facilitated changes in political ambition. The opposite is also true,
that collective organization makes new forms of economic activ
ity possible. Thus, the creation and the storage of written records
by government in the tenth and eleventh centuries increased the
demand for scribes and fostered the development of new skills
in making, storing, and retrieving information which were then
taken up by private individuals and groups.
Although economic and political organization are closely
related, however, they are fundamentally different. Collective
power is consciously directed and coordinated; economic com
plexity is in principle self-organizing. In theory it arises from the
choices made by individuals or groups, who exchange with others:
farmers, blacksmiths, millers, bakers, shoemakers, and so on.
6
The result is a great variety of mutually dependent and specialized

employments which no one has planned; it is the aggregate effect
of individual decisions, rather than the working out of an overall
plan or intelligent design. To return to the Stonehenge example, it
certainly seems unlikely that it was a product of self-organizing
activity, arising organically from myriad individual decisions and
actions. That the plan could be made and implemented, however,
seems to have depended on economic complexity: it was distinct
ively a product of agrarian not hunter-gathering society.
Explaining Stonehenge involves thinking about collective
organization, mobilizing ideas, the geography of power and iden
tity, the interrelationship of collective power, economic complex
ity, and technological capacity; and also about how these things
are part of a wider shared history or had parallels elsewhere. It is
now British in the sense that it is in the UK and on land inhabited
by people who identify as, among other things, Britons. However,
it is extremely unlikely that saying so would have meant much
to the people who built it, or that there is much institutional or
cultural continuity between them and modern Britons. The
current inhabitants of Britain are connected with the builders of
Stonehenge much more directly by the way they use collective
power than by the history of particular national institutions or
collective identity. The premise of this book is that there is more
to learn by thinking about their experience of acting collectively
than about their contribution to the making of the UK and
modern British identity.
* * *
Understanding how people have got things done in the past may
sound like an obvious place for a political history to start, so why
7
is this the first book to do it? Why do histories of Britain so often

tend to focus instead on national institutions and identity? An
element of the answer is itself the effect of a kind of path depend
ency (some other elements of the answer are considered in the
Conclusion). History emerged as a professional discipline in the
late nineteenth century when European nation states were prov
ing to be the most powerful political organizations on the planet.
Not surprisingly, many historians and other social scientists were
very interested in the origins of those states and since the UK was
the most powerful of those states, understanding its development
seemed to be particularly important for understanding the
modern world.
These remain valid interests, of course, but we now face other,
more pressing questions. Globalization and the rise of much larger
nation states have cut European states down to size, and made
other political questions seem more important. Nonetheless, a
preoccupation with understanding the evolution of British pol
itical institutions is still imprinted on our public history like the
Cheshire cat’s grin.
Changing the starting point leads to some radical shifts in per
spective. Most fundamentally, it connects the history of life on
Britain with much larger regions, effectively globalizing our view,
and this is clearly a useful perspective given current political con
cerns. From the Neolithic period onwards the record of collective
action on Britain reveals a history connected to or parallel with
a much broader history of humanity, and over the long run the
geography of culture and power has not mapped on to the island
very neatly at all. Only in the recent past has it (along with part
of the neighbouring one) been politically united and its inhabit
ants thought of themselves as British, and there is much more to
8
be learned from its political history than how that came about.
People have got things done by organizing at larger and smaller
scales throughout the period covered by this book, which (as we
have seen) is really the whole period in which we can say anything
much about collective action.
Seeing British history this way goes against a deep-rooted
tradition of telling some version of ‘our island story’. Formally
speaking, the island is Great Britain and the state is the United
Kingdom (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), but the two
are routinely conflated, as in the recurring political promise to
make Britain (that is, the UK) ‘great again’. However, as we will
see, the conflation is not as self-evidently natural as generations of
Britons have been taught to assume. Nor is it a general rule that
islands are self-contained political entities: in fact, they hardly
ever are. If Greenland is the largest thing we can refer to as an
island, then Great Britain is the ninth largest (ranked by surface
area). Of the top ten only Madagascar is both an island and an
independent state. Indeed, of the top fifty only another four are
self-contained states—Iceland, Cuba, Sri Lanka, and Taiwan. The
others are divided (like New Guinea or Borneo) or parts of a larger
political entity (like Greenland, Sumatra, Honshu, and, indeed,
Great Britain).1 Of course, the issue is more complicated than
this, but at the very least this suggests that we should hesitate to
think of islands as naturally self-contained political communities.
Dropping this assumption makes this book quite consciously a
history centred on a geographical region (Great Britain) rather than
on the story of a political community (the UK)—it is a history of
political life on Britain rather than in Britain.
The history of collective life on Britain has always been connected
with that elsewhere, but it is also, of course, unique. Like every
9
other geographical region, Great Britain’s political experience has

been particular to that place, and path dependency is important
to understanding that uniqueness. However, to explain patterns
of political life on Great Britain it is almost always necessary to
understand a larger context, and to see how those wider develop
ments impacted differently on different parts of the island. In one
sense it is a variety of global history—how did this region share in
wider developments, and how does its experience parallel that of
other regions? That helps sharpen our sense of what is particular
about the current phase of globalization. There have been many
other points when the political life of Great Britain has been con
nected to a much wider portion of the globe: that is not what is
new about the current context.
Above all, opening up past experience in this way helps us to
think about one of the most pressing questions in contemporary
life—how to act together to achieve the things that we need to do.
In talking about this I use the term ‘agency’, meaning by that the
capacity to exert an influence over our social and material world.
That is a restricted sense of the term—it does not, for example,
imply full autonomy or the capacity to achieve full flourishing,
but simply the capacity to act together to influence the conditions
in which individuals and groups make their lives. It is this kind of
agency that Karl Marx had in mind when he wrote that ‘Men make
their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they
do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but
under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted
from the past.’2 The book is both about those conditions as
they were encountered and about what people were able to do
about them.
10
In that sense this is a history for use. De-centring Westminster

by making the history of Britain about something much broader
reflects an important current in contemporary politics. Westminster
politicians are no longer regarded as people who can command
events. Young idealists in the twentieth century often thought
about how control of national governments could deliver a new
and perfected society. Young idealists in the twenty-first century
think more often about how international solidarities and move
ments are essential to achieving meaningful change. Many other
voters have a deep suspicion of national politicians after years of
being over-promised. In that context, a history of people, power,
and agency is more useful in understanding the present and think
ing about the future than a history of the origins of Westminster
government and British identity.
* * *
The book is divided into eight chapters. The first four flesh out
and illustrate these general arguments about how political power
works. Chapter 1 illustrates in more detail how much of the his
tory of political life can be understood as a dialogue between
collective power over the social and material world and the differ
ential power of one person or group over others. It gives examples
of how this relationship has been formalized in legal and institu
tional arrangements and how that both creates possibilities and sets
limits for the future. People address challenges using the collective
institutions they have inherited. They are empowered or limited
by that institutional inheritance and by how successfully they can
modify it for immediate purposes—this is the path dependency
that often distinguishes one political society from another.
11
Three thematic chapters then explore the factors which shape

how collective institutions are used: mobilizing ideas, the material
conditions people encounter, and their collective organizational
capacity. How we understand the world defines what needs to be
done and how to do it; over time, changes in dominant ideas have
led to dramatic changes in how political power has been used.
Similarly, political power is often used to deal with real, material
challenges—as in the present, for example, with the great fluid
ity of global capital or the threat of climate change and global
pandemic. What is done also depends on available institutions.
Organizational and technological capacity set limits on what is
achievable, but also create new possibilities for action—for example,
the potentially huge changes in how societies are policed made
possible by the digital revolution and Big Data analysis.
The second half of the book explores changing patterns in the
use of collective institutions. Chapter 5 looks at the geographies
of power, illustrating that getting things done has not always or
naturally led people to act as Britons, but also at smaller and larger
scales too: manor, parish, lordship, town, and county, or through
interstate and transnational organizations. Chapter 6 outlines who
has had the power to affect what collective institutions have been
used for at these various scales of action, and how they achieved
it. What (if anything) have those with less differential power, or
those largely excluded from it, been able to do to shape how col
lective institutions have been used? These lead, in Chapter 7, to
an outline of the history of political life on Great Britain over the
long run. It is organized around phases in the history of political
power defined by broad shifts in ideas, material conditions, and
organizational forms. The main landmarks in this narrative are
not new, but the perspective from which we see them is.
12
The Conclusion draws out two key themes of the book: how
this changes our view of the relationship between the history of
Britain and a wider global history; and, secondly, how thinking
about agency offers a ‘history for use’ when reflecting on our own
political situation. We can think of that first shift as a change
from understanding how Britain, through industrialization,
democratization, and empire, made the modern world to an
understanding of how, over the much longer term, the world
made modern Britain. The aim is to find a more useful way to
think about political life over the long run, one which makes
our understanding of past experience more relevant to current
political debates.
13
POLITICAL LIFE
Power Over Our World, Power Over Each Other
T he various phases of construction at Stonehenge must have

relied on someone or some people having the power to
demand and direct labour. As we have seen, this is the difference
between collective power (the power we exercise together over our
social and material world) and differential power (the power of one
person or group over others, power which is distributed unevenly
across society).
These forms of power are in continual dialogue. Collective
power is not necessarily mobilized voluntarily, and it is likely
that people will want to set limits on the differential power of
those coordinating collective action, perhaps in an explicit legal
arrangement or the creation of an institution regulated by clear
rules. This is the role of institutionalization. For example, draining
a marsh might require giving a coordinating group differential
power to direct the labour and make decisions relating to the land
of other people. The result is a collective power to drain the marsh,
but a differential power for those organizing the work. In order to
regulate that power a drainage committee might be established.
This institution tries to achieve something for the community
that the individuals could not achieve for themselves—exercising
pol i t ic a l l ife
a collective power. But it also regulates that differential power,

giving assurance that the committee’s decisions are properly
restrained and appropriately directed. In other words, collective
power is both a capacity to get things done, and a way to restrain
differential power. The relationship between the two is formalized
in collective institutions or perhaps regulated by law. This is the func-
tion of public law (which regulates the powers of government)
and an independent judiciary.
Collective institutions act at the direction and command of
individuals or groups who, as a result, have differential power.
There is therefore a risk that they come to serve the interests of those
who control them or become a means to entrench elite privilege.
This is true at large scales—supranational organizations and
nation states—and at more local scales—drainage committees,
town and parish councils, and so on. Institutions of all kinds
can be seen in that sense as formalizing power relations. But it
is not usually a once-and-for-all agreement. Over time collective
institutions are subject to pressure to ensure that they continue to
serve genuinely collective ends rather than, for example, particular
vested interests.
Another important feature of collective institutions is that they
create path dependencies. People acting in the present often use
the tools they have to hand, including their institutional inherit-
ance. So, the draining of the marsh might create other problems
of environmental or economic organization—issues relating to
water supply, the division of common land, or forms of sustain-
able agriculture, for example—and the committee might offer a
convenient tool with which to address them. The way that those
challenges are addressed in our village might therefore differ
from a neighbouring village that had never established a drainage
15
committee. Eventually the drainage committee might do all sorts

of things which are also done elsewhere, but not by a drainage
committee: a path dependency is created which means similar
problems are addressed differently according to the local institu-
tional inheritance.
The evolution of the English parliament gives a real-world
illustration of path dependency. It was originally a body convened
at the monarch’s pleasure to advise him or her, and gradually
acquired rights and powers in relation to the advice, legislation, and
money that it delivered for the monarch. Over time it became
the seat of executive authority and a representative (in theory at
least) of all the citizens of the UK, something quite different from
the institution as it was first created. This happened by gradual
evolution: as it proved useful for one purpose, a new capacity was
created, and that potential was used for the future. Magna Carta
would be an equally resonant English example—initially a deal
between the king and his barons to solve an immediate impasse,
it made more general claims that have been interpreted more and
more broadly over time.
Much of political life can be understood in this way, as a dialogue
between collective and differential power, the institutionalization
and regulation of both, and the path dependencies it creates which
distinguish one political system from another.
This chapter illustrates these relationships through the example
of the growth of the Roman empire, then discusses the issues
through two thematic examples—the history of taxation and pub-
lic works, both of which involve a negotiation of the relationship
between support for collective action (the ‘public good’) and the
protection of private property rights. Finally, it briefly discusses
British views of the EU from this perspective, of the regulation of
16
the differential power of those coordinating the use of collective

institutions.
The Roman Empire: Collective Institutions

and Differential Power
A betting person would not, in 1000 bce, have backed the inhab-
itants of Rome to dominate Great Britain. That is the date of the
earliest evidence of permanent settlement in Rome, and 200 years
later there were reed and clay huts on the Palatine Hill. These were
the characteristic dwellings of a population that lived by subsist-
ence farming. By the early sixth century there are signs of a wall
but little to suggest the capacity for collective action demonstrated
at Stonehenge 1,500 years earlier.
However, within a relatively short space of time Rome became
the centre of one of the great Iron Age empires, developing
sophisticated collective institutions and leaving a very full record
of the ideas that drove its development, as well as an archaeological
record of its impact on the social and material environment of
north-west Europe far more dramatic than anything that had
come before. The standard accounts of this illustrate the trade-
offs between collective and differential power.
Rome was originally a monarchy, evolving into a Republic as
institutions were built which mobilized collective power more
effectively. It was later said, for example, that under the last Roman
Kings, the city had been organized into ‘centuries’. Each provided
soldiers and was represented for legislative, electoral, and judi-
cial purposes in the comitia centuriata, the Centuriate Assembly.
The centuries were organized according to wealth, so that overall
17
there was a clear idea of who could supply what to the army, but
also a limit on that: a collective capacity that was also regulated
by collective agreement. Collective institutions had been used
to restrain rather than to protect the differential power of elites,
regulating who did what to support those institutions and who
got what benefits as a result, and making them at the same time
more effective.
By that time Rome had absorbed the territory of the Etruscans,
a significant military power to the north which had previously
been far more significant than Rome. Etruscan power had declined
under pressure from its rivals, and the Romans had been able to
absorb the heartland, offering security to Etruscan elites in return
for their cooperation. The power of Roman collective institutions
in this case may have served elite interests: Etruscan elites may have
submitted to Roman authority in order to shore up their privilege.
Although the creation of more effective collective institutions
had depended on broader social integration in Rome, those col-
lective institutions may then have become a way of entrenching
particular interests such as those of the Etruscan elites. Certainly,
this dynamic explains much of the story of the rise of Rome—
increasingly efficient military organization led to conquest
and the expansion of trade; but also entrenched vested interests,
encouraged corruption, and threatened a tyranny by those in
charge. As well as channelling greater wealth into the empire,
military success bred wealth and power for civilian elites and
military commanders.
As a result, there were attempts to re-balance this relationship
to give greater benefits to the populace at large—for example, in
the reforms proposed by the Gracchus brothers, Tiberius and
Gaius, between 133 and 121 bce. Land seized by conquest, or forfeit
18
to Rome, became ‘public land’. Tiberius proposed that no single

individual could hold more than around 300 acres of public land
(with extra allowed for sons), allowing the rest of it to be used to
help the landless. It was in effect an attempt to prevent a land grab
by those in power, and to ensure the benefits of Roman conquest
were distributed more widely among those who contributed
to it. This direct challenge to vested interests resulted in a bat-
tle for office and influence as Tiberius tried to get into a position
to push through these measures. It ended in his violent murder.
His brother Gaius then took up the cause of reform, continuing
to propose redistributive policies, to extend rights of citizenship,
and to ensure supplies of grain at reasonable prices to the Roman
population. There was a further battle for office, to influence elec-
tions and to increase the powers of those offices most likely to
support reform and so on. Once again, though, it ended in violent
death, this time not just of the leader, Gaius, but of 3,000 of his
supporters.
As in Rome’s earliest days, when Etruscan elites seem to have
embraced Roman authority to secure their own position, its col
lective institutions could be made to support vested interests and
entrench elite power. Some individuals and groups profited dis-
proportionately, even corruptly, from their military effectiveness.
Equally, though, as in the days of the last kings, the Gracchus
brothers attempted to use the collective power of the population
to restrain the differential power of military and political elites,
and to use collective institutions to deliver wider benefits.1
In subsequent centuries those who saw the Roman frontier
advancing towards them faced similar choices. Julius Caesar led
expeditions to Britain in 55 and 54 bce. His own motivation reflected
the dynamics of Roman political life—building up his power
19
through conquest and the spoils of victory—and by the lure of

Britain’s precious metals. The pretext, though, was the flight of
Mandobrocius, the son of a king based in East Anglia, killed by
Cassivellaunus, leader of the tribes based north of the Thames
centred in what is now Hertfordshire. Roman power was a

resource for Mandobrocius, making it worth submitting to the
personal power of Caesar.
Although Caesar’s expeditions came to nothing, in the
following century British elites showed signs of engaging with
Roman life voluntarily, adapting Roman manners and style.
British coins included Latin inscriptions and bore images that
reflected Roman rather than British artistic taste, while elite grave
goods and hoards of precious objects included Roman objects,
coins, and even a helmet.2 But to gain access to Roman power
local elites had to acknowledge the power that men like Caesar
now had over them.
After the concerted Claudian conquest in 43, the Roman prov-
ince took shape as an amalgam of client kingdoms and areas
transformed into Roman patterns of administration. Some local
rulers, such as Cogidubnus, were able to build up their power
with Roman backing and it may have been Cogidubnus who lived
in splendour at Fishbourne. The magnificent villa there was
built on a massive scale only thirty years after the invasion, on the
site of an invasion-period military base. Built in the latest style,
with imported marble and magnificent mosaics and furnished with
fashionable objects, it would have been instantly recognizable to a
visitor from Rome as the house of someone fully connected with
contemporary Roman culture. If it was the house of Cogidubnus
it is hard to imagine a clearer demonstration of the benefits of
cooperating with Roman power.3 For others, though, the demands
20
of the Romans seemed unbearable and some Britons who had ini-
tially cooperated later rebelled. Accepting the benefits of Roman
rule—the massively superior power of its collective institutions—
also entailed the acceptance of the differential power of Rome’s
military men and administrators. Failure to accept that led usually
to disaster.
A kind of equilibrium was reached before the whole island was
absorbed, though. Raids on the prosperity of Romanized Britain,
or the threat of them, drew the army into expansion, as did the
internal dynamics of Roman politics. But the threat to the stabil-
ity of the empire posed by successful warlords drew the Emperor
Hadrian into a programme of consolidation. A line was drawn and
a stable limit set—one of the most visible marks of Roman collect
ive power on the island, Hadrian’s Wall. It probably took 15,000
men about six years to build it—not just a huge wall and ditch
stretching for 73 miles, but milecastles, towers, turrets, and forts,
as well as large civil settlements such as those at Vindolanda and
Housesteads. Here perhaps is the most startling demonstration of
the political change—a stone structure on a scale vastly greater than
could have been achieved by earlier generations on the island—far
greater of course than Stonehenge—and something not rivalled
for centuries afterwards (Figure 1).
The wall may not have been a defensive structure but rather a
means to monitor movement in and out of the province (most of
the troops were positioned well south of it). What is clear, though,
is that inside the limit that it symbolized were those who enjoyed
the benefits of the Pax Romana (Roman peace)—not least the
defence of their lives and livelihood. But the collective institu-
tions of the Roman system also generated enormous differential
power. Within the empire this led to battles for control of tribute
21
Figure 1. Hadrian’s Wall
and taxation, and scenes of Gothic horror expressing the power of

some individuals over others. On Great Britain, though, the trade-
off between the benefits of rule by Rome’s collective institutions
and the resultant differential power of those who controlled them
seems to have proved largely stable. What fatally unbalanced
Roman rule on Britain was not internal contests for power or
revolts against the Roman order, such as that led by Boudicca and
later rebels; it was external shocks, the weaknesses of the Roman
centre, and the attractiveness of Britain as a base from which to com-
pete for imperial power which ended Roman rule on the island.
Private Property and the Public Good
Much of the history of political life on Britain can be understood

in this way, as the interplay of collective and differential power:
22
not just the rise and expansion of the Roman empire, but also
the formation of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and the regulation
of relationships between king and subjects, the rise of parliamen-
tary government, or the debate about the relationship with the
EU. Each of these collective institutions delivers power over the
social and material world in return for acceptance of the differen-
tial power of those coordinating political action. That differential
power is in turn regulated in forms of agreement with those sub-
ject to government.
It is equally easy to illustrate the benefits of collective power:
in the relatively recent past the lives saved by the Clean Air Act
(1956) and its successors, or the measures in the 1960s including
the Road Safety Act (1967) which tightened up the drink-driving
laws and required new cars to have seat belts. There were clear
benefits to health and housing from the creation of the NHS or
the Town and Country Planning Act (1947); to the low paid from
the introduction of the minimum wage (1999) and to the whole
population from the decisive and successful intervention of the
UK government in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash.4
Rather than try to explore this relationship comprehensively,
however, I take here a single thematic example over the long run:
the relationship between private property and the public good;
that is, between individual property rights and collective power.
During the ninth and tenth centuries the kingdoms of lowland
Britain were threatened with extinction by Viking raids and settle-
ment. A critically important response in the Anglo-Saxon part of
Great Britain was the agreement to raise money to make an annual
payment to the Danes in return for guaranteed peace, starting in
991. This had huge effects on Anglo-Saxon society, involving the
creation of a system to allocate the burden which seems to have
23
led, within a couple of decades, to a dramatic transfer of wealth to

the Vikings—Scandinavian hoards from this period contain large
quantities of Anglo-Saxon coins.5 This was a significant exercise
of collective power—allowing Anglo-Saxons to act together to
take control over the circumstances of their lives.
This was done according to set rules—how much was due from
what kind of land and so on, and how the money was to be used.
The power of the collective was mobilized, creating differential
power for the king; and that differential power was regulated. This
regulation was probably not achieved by negotiation, although the
precise detail of the original arrangements is obscure. Nonetheless
it does seem that some elite figures reached formal and lasting
agreements about what they should contribute, and on what basis
that would be calculated. The formal requirement to gain consent
for taxation was a much later achievement, probably of the thir-
teenth century, but the Danegeld (as it was later to be known) had
been institutionalized—it evolved into a regular form of collective
action, with recognized powers and limits, which allowed for pre-
dictable, limited, and to some degree legitimate action.6 This land
tax was retained after the Norman Conquest and used for different
purposes—it was for a while in fact more or less unique in west-
ern Europe.7 It had created a capacity which English kings used for
the future, and the way it was regulated shaped how future kings
could or could not try to do similar things.
For example, in the 1630s the English King Charles I wanted to
update his navy, but without using parliament to raise money.
The design of merchant and military vessels was gradually
diverging so that monarchs increasingly needed specialized
fighting ships and could no longer simply borrow merchant ships
and fit them for war. Previous monarchs had established a right
24
to demand that their subjects should provide ships, but as the

demands of war changed this gradually shifted to providing the
money for the king to acquire the right kind of ship. From 1635
onwards Charles pushed this right to raise ship money, claiming
that there was a national emergency affecting the whole kingdom,
and that he could therefore ask everyone in the kingdom to pro-
vide money to acquire the necessary ships. The cost was parcelled
out to each county and county governors asked to raise the rele
vant portion from the inhabitants. There was a complex legal
hearing about this—whether people were obliged to believe the
king when he said there was an emergency; if they were, whether
they had to pay up or if they could wait for a parliament to give
the king the money he needed; and if people refused, whether this
could be enforced as a debt to the king (the counter-case being
that since they were being asked for a bit of a ship due from the
county, they owed the rest of the county a bit of a ship, rather
than the king some money). The principles are clear—the need
for collective defence, rights in private property, and the detailed
regulation of the relationship between the two—but the form of
the discussion is highly technical and, frankly, odd. These strange
and convoluted legal arguments are an example of how previ-
ous decisions and settlements set the terms for future argument.
Among the numerous precedents cited to decide whether or not
Ship Money was legal was the Danegeld, first raised more than 650
years previously.8
Moreover, the measures taken in the seventeenth century
were themselves important for subsequent generations, and
Ship Money, for example, became a precedent. The judgment
was cited in a landmark constitutional case 400 years later about
commandeering private property during the First World War. In
25
1916 De Keyser’s Royal Hotel, which had not been thriving, was
requisitioned for use by the Royal Flying Corps and after the war
the owner claimed compensation. The requisition depended on the
‘prerogative power’ of the sovereign which, in effect, over-rode the
normal property rights of the citizen. Such prerogative p owers
originally belonged to the monarch independently of parliament
but are now exercised in the name of the monarch, usually by the
prime minister. While it is clear that new prerogative powers can-
not be created, it is equally clear that prerogative powers do not
depend on parliamentary sanction.
In this particular case, the legal argument concentrated on
whether private property could be requisitioned by prerogative
power without compensation. The judges ruled that the preroga-
tive is in abeyance when statute law can be found to provide assist
ance to the complainant: in other words, that the statute does not
abolish the prerogative, but in particular cases it can mean that a
prerogative power does not apply. They neither denied the essen-
tial prerogative power to requisition nor asserted that statute law
trumped the prerogative in general. Instead, they ruled that the
owner of the hotel was entitled to compensation under the 1842
Defence Act: the existence of a relevant statute offering protection
to the citizen meant that the prerogative power to seize property
without compensation was in abeyance.9 They had not challenged
the power of senior military commanders to decide what was
necessary for national defence—such a judgement was not a matter
for the judges. It was on this point that they cited Ship Money: that
the court could not second guess the King’s judgement. It is hard to
make sense of this set of arguments without understanding the long
prior history of the relationship between collective institutions and
private property and how that had been institutionalized in the UK.
26
This is one form of path dependency: that the institutional

ization of power frames future discussions about how it can be
used. Another is that once a collective institution is established it
can be used for all sorts of other purposes. The basic unit of tax
ation for the Danegeld was the ‘hide’, which could be used to raise
money for all sorts of things: local rates for the maintenance of
highways and bridges, and the militia might all use arrangements
worked out for national taxation. The opposite was also true—
that demands from the Crown were parcelled out according to
local arrangements made for other purposes. By the later six-
teenth century, for example, regular rates were being imposed in
many parts of England to deal with poverty—to house, employ,
feed, or punish the poor—and these had a complicated relation-
ship to rating and administrative systems for national taxation.
Taxation also has significant uses beyond simply spending and
borrowing: powers to tax and spend have become a means for gov-
ernments to manage individual behaviour and the economy as a
whole. Within a few years of the Ship Money controversy Charles
I’s government had broken down (for reasons much broader and
more complex than Ship Money). In winning the subsequent civil
war parliament created new forms of taxation which transformed
the state: powers created to win the civil war were retained
by the restored monarchy and helped lay the foundations of
the UK’s great power status (see Chapter 6). An unintended
consequence of this was that the government became the biggest
spender in the economy, and thereafter its fiscal (tax and s pending)
policies were used increasingly consciously not just to raise
money but also to shape economic activity. Fiscal policy can be
used to raise relative prices—such as by making imported cars
more expensive than ones produced at home in order to protect
27
jobs. This can be done to incentivize changes in individual

behaviour too—to stop smoking or drinking, to use hybrid cars, to
install solar panels, and so on. That governments have this power
is not a reflection of the initial intentions behind the Danegeld,
but a product of the long history of using an established power or
institution to deal with a new problem or opportunity.
Each of these examples is more complicated than I have set them
out here, but all of them represent the negotiation of powers to
tax—the balance between, on the one hand, the collective power
delivered by taxation and the benefits that can be claimed for it and,
on the other, the restraint of governments and protection of indi-
vidual property. And each resolution frames future discussion and
the potential for future action—one example of the path depend-
ency which makes political entities different from one another.
Public Works
Public works have raised similar issues. For example, for centuries
London has faced environmental problems resulting from popula-
tion growth and high population density. In 1520 it probably had
60,000 inhabitants, about five times as many as Norwich, which
was then the second largest city on Great Britain. By 1700 London had
grown nearly ten times bigger—575,000—and was nineteen times
the size of Norwich. During the eighteenth century it continued
to grow rapidly and at a rate that far outstripped its provincial
rivals, reaching a million sometime soon after 1800. This growth
was only possible because of in-migration since the death rate in
London was higher than the birth rate.10 This rapid growth, fuelled
by constant migration, fed a city in which there was no single
28
coordinating authority—what we think of as London was divided

administratively between the cities of London and Westminster
and spread beyond both of them into Southwark south of the
river and to areas to the north and east.
This created problems which prefigured those of the large
industrial cities of the nineteenth century. One way of appreci-
ating them is through the history of human waste—an unavoid-
able and largely private matter which had potentially catastrophic
consequences for the collective good if not properly managed. In
1600 most houses in London had access to a privy, and some of
them discharged directly into watercourses of the Thames. Many
more, though, drained into a brick or stone-lined cess pool. These
had to be dug out periodically—a truly unsavoury and not par-
ticularly safe task. It attracted a certain amount of dark humour at
the expense of the men who did this work, known among other
things as gong farmers, Tom Turdmen, or gold finders. The work
itself was demanding. As described by Henry Mayhew in the nine-
teenth century, tubs were dipped into the cess pool until they
could not reach the ordure, at which point ‘holemen’ went down
on ladders and shovelled the waste directly into the tubs, each of
which might weigh over 50kg when full. The tubs were raised by
ropemen and carried by tubmen to a waiting cart, into which they
were emptied from the tops of ladders.11 It was heavy and deeply
unpleasant work: once disturbed the stench from cess pits could
be unbearable, and to protect the public at large this work had
to be conducted after 9 pm. There were also tight controls over
where the ‘night soil men’ could dump the ordure they had dug.
These private initiatives were insufficient to cope with further
spectacular growth in population of the city in the first half of the
nineteenth century, when London’s population grew from around
29
1 million to nearly 2.4 million. Arrangements for sanitation were

no different in the early nineteenth century from those of the
fifteenth. At that point 200,000 houses had cess pools beneath
them, and effluent was sometimes forced upwards through the
wooden floorboards of poorer households. The growing popular-
ity of water closets increased the demand for water at the same
time that the population was rocketing, and many of the water
closets drained into the watercourses from which drinking water
was drawn.12
In 1838 a report by Edwin Chadwick attributed an outbreak of
typhus to sewerage problems. However, management of water and
sewerage in London was divided between seven Crown-appointed
commissioners. Chadwick’s proposal for a single commission
with responsibility for the whole of London met determined
opposition from existing authorities, and his ideas were not
implemented. The collective institution established to tackle the
issue would have created a differential power in the hands of that
body that others found unacceptable.
Three cholera outbreaks between 1848 and 1854 carried off tens
of thousands of victims, but by then the idea of a single commis-
sion had been abandoned. However, in that part of the conurba-
tion governed by the Corporation of the City of London the death
rate had been low. This seemed to be a result of the enforced clean-
ing of privies, emptying of cess pits, removal of ordure, and the
regular inspection of lodging houses. Using its own powers, the
Corporation had apparently dramatically limited the impact of
cholera—of the 10,000 deaths in the 1854 cholera outbreak only
200 were within its jurisdiction.
This public health success by a subordinate jurisdiction meant
that the decentralizers won: the differential power of the central
30
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CHAPTER VII.
The effect of American conciliation upon Canning was immediate
and simple; but the effect of American defiance upon Napoleon will
be understood only by those who forget the fatigue of details in their
interest for Napoleon’s character. The Emperor’s steps in 1809 are
not easily followed. He was overburdened with labor; his motives
and policy shifted as circumstances changed; and among second-
rate interests he lost more habitually than ever the thread of his own
labyrinth.
Travelling day and night from Spain in January, 1809, with the
same haste and with something of the same motive as when four
years afterward he posted back to Paris from his Russian disaster,
Napoleon appeared unexpectedly at his capital January 24. The
moment was one of crisis, but a crisis of his own making. He had
suffered a political check in Spain, which he had but partially
disguised by a useless campaign. The same spirit of universal
dominion which grasped at Spain and required the conquest of
England, roused resistance elsewhere almost as desperate as that
of the Spaniards and English. Even the American Congress repealed
its embargo and poured its commerce through so-called neutral
ports into the lap of England, while at the same moment Austria,
driven to desperation, prepared to fight for a fourth time. Napoleon
had strong reasons for choosing that moment to force Austria wholly
into his system. Germany stood at his control. Russia alone could
have made the result doubtful; but the Czar was wholly French. “M.
Romanzoff,” wrote Armstrong to the State Department,[99] “with the
fatalism of the Turk, shakes his head at Austria, and asks what has
hitherto been got by opposition; calls to mind the fate of Prussia, and
closes by a pious admonition not to resist the will of God.”
Toward Austria the Emperor directed all his attention, and rapidly
drove her government into an attitude of resistance the most spirited
and the most desperate taken by any people of Europe except
Spain. Although Austria never wearied of fighting Napoleon, and
rarely fought without credit, her effort to face, in 1809, a Power
controlling the military resources of France, Italy, and Germany, with
the moral support of Russia behind them, had an heroic quality
higher than was shown at any time by any other government in
Europe. April 9 the Austrian army crossed the Inn, and began the
war. April 13 Napoleon left Paris for the Danube, and during the next
three months his hands were full. Austria fought with an energy
which put Germany and Russia to shame.
Such a moment was ill suited for inviting negotiation on American
affairs; but Armstrong received instructions a few days after
Napoleon left Paris, and with these instructions came a copy of the
Non-intercourse Act of March 1, which, while apparently forbidding
intercourse with England and France, notified Napoleon that the
United States would no longer obey his wishes, or keep their
industries from seeking a British market through indirect channels.
Armstrong communicated this Act to the French government in the
terms of his instructions:[100]—
“The undersigned is instructed to add that any interpretation of the
Imperial Decrees of Nov. 21, 1806, and Dec. 17, 1807, which shall
have the effect of leaving unimpaired the maritime rights of the Union,
will be instantaneously followed by a revocation of the present Act [as
regards France] and a re-establishment of the ordinary commercial
intercourse between the two countries.”
May 17 Champagny, then at Munich, having received
Armstrong’s letter of April 29, notified the Minister of Marine,[101]—
“The news of this measure having received an official character by
the communication made to me by the United States minister on the
part of his Government, I think it my duty to transmit to your
Excellency a copy of the law which he has addressed to me.”
Armstrong informed Secretary Robert Smith[102] that nothing

need be expected from this step, unless it were perhaps his own
summary expulsion from France as a result of offence given either
by the Non-intercourse Act or by the language of Armstrong’s
despatches surreptitiously published. Bitterly as Armstrong detested
Napoleon, he understood but little the mind and methods of that
unusual character. Never in his career had the Emperor been busier
than when Armstrong wrote this note to Champagny, but it caught his
attention at once. He had fought one battle after another, and in five
days had captured forty thousand men and a hundred pieces of
cannon; he had entered Vienna May 10, and had taken his quarters
at Schönbrunn, the favorite palace of the Austrian emperor. There he
was in a position of no little difficulty, in spite of his military
successes, when his courier brought him despatches from Paris
containing news that the United States, March 1, had repealed the
embargo, and that the British government, April 26, had withdrawn
the Orders in Council of November, 1807, and had substituted a
mere blockade of Holland, France, and Italy. The effect of these two
events was greatly increased by their coming together.
At first Napoleon seemed to feel no occasion for altering his
course. After reading Armstrong’s letter, he dictated May 18 a reply
which was to serve as the legal argument to justify his refusal of
concessions. His decrees were founded on eternal principles, and
could not be revoked:—
“The seas belong to all nations. Every vessel sailing under the flag
of any nation whatever, recognized and avowed by it, ought to be on
the ocean as if it were in its own ports. The flag flying from the mast of
a merchantman ought to be respected as though it were on the top of
a village steeple.... To insult a merchant-vessel carrying the flag of any
Power is to make an incursion into a village or a colony belonging to
that Power. His Majesty declares that he considers the vessels of all
nations as floating colonies belonging to the said nations. In result of
this principle, the sovereignty and independence of one nation are a
property of its neighbors.”[103]
The conclusion that the sovereignty and independence of every
nation were the property of France, and that a floating colony
denationalized by the visit of a foreign officer became the property of
Napoleon, involved results too extreme for general acceptance.
Arbitrary as the Emperor was, he could act only through agents, and
could not broach such doctrines without meeting remonstrance. His
dissertation on the principles of the jus gentium was sent May 18 to
Champagny. Four days afterward, May 22, Napoleon fought the
battle of Essling, in which he lost fifteen or twenty thousand men and
suffered a serious repulse. Even this absorbing labor, and the critical
situation that followed, did not long interrupt his attention to
American business. May 26, Champagny made to the Emperor a
report[104] on American affairs, taking ground altogether different
from that chosen by Napoleon. After narrating the story of the
various orders, decrees, blockades, embargoes, and non-intercourse
measures, Champagny discussed them in their practical effect on
the interests and industries of France:—
“The fact cannot be disguised; the interruption of neutral
commerce which has done much harm to England has been also a
cause of loss to France. The staple products of our territory have
ceased to be sold. Those that were formerly exported are lost, or are
stored away, leaving impoverished both the owner who produced
them and the dealer who put them on the market. One of our chief
sources of prosperity is dried up. Our interest therefore leads us
toward America, whose commerce would still furnish an ample outlet
for several of our products, and would bring us either materials of
prime necessity for our manufactures, or produce the use of which
has become almost a necessity, and which we would rather not owe
to our enemies.”
For these reasons Champagny urged the Emperor not to persist
in punishing America, but to charge M. d’Hauterive, the acting
Minister of Foreign Relations at Paris, with the duty of discussing
with General Armstrong the details of an arrangement. Champagny
supported his advice by urging that England had made advances to
America, had revoked her orders of November, 1807, and seemed
about to turn the French Decrees against France. “It will always be in
your Majesty’s power to evade this result. A great step to this end
will be taken when Mr. Armstrong is made aware that your Majesty is
disposed to interpret your commercial decrees favorably for the
Americans, provided measures be taken that no tribute shall be paid
to England, and that their efficacy shall be assured. Such will be the
object of M. d’Hauterive’s mission.”
Napoleon, impressed by Champagny’s reasoning, fortified by the
news that Erskine had settled the commercial disputes between
England and America, sent to Champagny the draft of a new decree,
[105] which declared that inasmuch as the United States by their firm
resistance to the arbitrary measures of England had obtained the
revocation of the British Orders of November, 1807, and were no
longer obliged to pay imposts to the British government, therefore
the Milan Decree of Dec. 17, 1807, should be withdrawn, and neutral
commerce should be replaced where it stood under the Berlin
Decree of Nov. 21, 1806.
This curious paper was sent June 10 to Paris for a report from
the Treasury as to its probable effects. June 13 Champagny sent
instructions to Hauterive[106] directing him to begin negotiation with
Armstrong. Far from overlooking either the intention or the effect of
the Non-intercourse Act, Champagny complained that it was unfair to
France and “almost an act of violence;” but he did not resent it. “The
Emperor is not checked by this consideration; he feels neither
prejudice nor resentment against the Americans, but he remains firm
in his projects of resisting British pretensions. The measures taken
by England will chiefly decide his measures.” Champagny explained
that the Emperor hesitated to issue the new decree already
forwarded for the inspection of the customs authorities, not because
any change had taken place in the reasons given for its policy, but
because the arrangement of Erskine was said to be disavowed.
“What has prevented the Emperor till now from coming to a
decision in this respect is the news contained in the English journals
of an arrangement between England and America, and announced by
a Proclamation of the President of the United States, April 19, 1806. If
from this act should result the certainty that the English renounce their
principle of blockade, then the Emperor would revoke the whole of his
measures relative to neutral commerce. But the ‘Gazette de France’ of
June 5, for I have no other authority, pretends that the British ministry
refuse to sanction the arrangement concluded in America; and the
result of all this is an extreme uncertainty, which prevents a decision
as to the course proper to be taken.”
This was the situation of the American dispute June 13, 1809, at
Vienna, at the moment Canning’s disavowal of Erskine became
certain. Thus far Napoleon’s mind had passed through two changes,
—the first, in consequence of the British Order in Council of April 26,
which led him to decide on withdrawing the Milan Decree; the
second, in consequence of Erskine’s arrangement, which led him to
promise America everything she asked. The news of Canning’s
refusal to carry out the arrangement stopped Napoleon short in his
career of concession; he left the American affair untouched until after
the battle of Wagram, July 6, which was followed by the submission
of Austria, July 12. The battle of Wagram placed him in a position to
defy resistance. Immediately afterward he sent orders to Paris to
stop Hauterive’s negotiation. About the middle of July Hauterive told
the American minister “that a change had taken place in the views of
the Emperor; and in particular that a decree prepared by his orders
as a substitute for those of November, 1806, and December, 1807,
and which would have been a very material step toward
accommodation, had been laid aside.”[107]
In the heat and fury of the battle of Wagram this order must have
been given, for it was known at Paris only one week afterward, and
Armstrong reported the message, July 24, as a notice that unless
America resisted the British doctrines of search and blockade she
need expect no relaxation on the part of Napoleon; while this notice
was supported by a menace that until the Emperor knew the
President’s decision he would take no step to make matters worse
than they already were.[108]
If Armstrong put trust in this last promise or menace, he showed
once more his want of sympathy with the Emperor’s character. Quick
to yield before an evident disaster, Napoleon was equally quick to
exhaust the fruits of an evident victory; and the advantage he had
obtained over the United States was as decided, if not as extensive,
as that which he had gained over Austria. In one way or another
America must pay for rebellion, and she could be made to pay only
by the usual process of seizing her commerce.
June 7, while the Emperor was still hesitating or leaning to
concession, Decrès, his Minister of Marine, wrote to him that an
American schooner with a cargo of colonial produce had arrived at
San Sebastian May 20, and that more such vessels must be
expected to arrive, since the Non-intercourse Act had opened the
trade to Spanish ports. What should be done with them? The French
Decrees denationalized every vessel which went to England, or
wished to go there, or had been visited by an English cruiser, or had
violated the laws of the United States, or had incurred suspicion of
fraud; but the schooner in question was under no suspicion of fraud,
—she had not been to England, nor had she ever thought of going
there; she had not been stopped by any cruiser; she was in a
Spanish port, nominally outside of French jurisdiction, and she was
authorized in going there by the law of the United States. Here was
an unforeseen case, and Decrès properly referred it to the Emperor.
[109]
Decrès’ letter reached Vienna about June 13, the day when
Champagny described the Emperor as vexed by an extreme
uncertainty on American affairs. The subject was referred to the
Minister of Finance. No decision seems to have been reached until
August. Then Maret, the Secretary of State in personal attendance
on the Emperor, created Duc de Bassano a few days later, enclosed
to Champagny, August 4, the draft of a new decree,[110] which was
never published, but furnished the clew to most of the intricate
movements of Napoleon for the following year:—
“Napoleon, etc.,—considering that the American Congress by its
Act of March 1, 1809, has forbidden the entrance of its ports to all
French vessels under penalty of confiscation of ships and cargo,—on
the report of our Minister of Finance have decreed and decree what
follows:—
“Art. 1. The American schooner loaded with colonial produce and
entered at San Sebastian the 20th May, 1809, will be seized and
confiscated.
“Art. 2. The merchandise composing the cargo of the vessel will be
conveyed to Bayonne, there to be sold, and the produce of the sale
paid into the caisse de l’amortissement (sinking-fund).
“Art. 3. Every American ship which shall enter the ports of France,
Spain, or Italy will be equally seized and confiscated, as long as the
same measure shall continue to be executed in regard to French
vessels in the harbors of the United States.”
Probably the ministers united in objecting to a general

confiscation founded on the phrase of a penalty which the customs
laws of every country necessarily contained. Whatever the reason,
this draft rested in the files of the office over which Champagny
presided, and the Emperor seemed to forget it; but its advantages
from his standpoint were too great to be lost, and its principle was
thenceforward his guide.
Not even Armstrong, suspicious as he was of Napoleon’s
intentions, penetrated the projected policy; yet Armstrong was by no
means an ordinary minister, and his information was usually good. At
the moment when he received what he supposed to be the promise
that Napoleon would not make matters worse until he heard what the
President had to say, Armstrong warned his Government that this
assurance was intended as a menace rather than as a pledge:[111]—
“What will satisfy him on even these points, particularly the former,
is not distinctly explained. Our creed on this subject is one thing; that
of the British government another; and the French doctrine of visit, a
third. When we speak of illegal search, we mean that which claims the
right of impressment also; but according to the imperial decrees and
their commentators, the offence is equally great whatever may be the
object of the visit,—whether it be to demand half your crew, or to
ascertain only the port from which you sailed, the nature of your
cargo, or the character of your flag. This is pushing things to a point
whither we cannot follow them, and which, if I do not mistake, is
selected because it is a point of that description.”
Before the month of August, Napoleon reverted more
energetically than ever to his old practice and policy. Within
Armstrong’s reach remained only one influence strong enough to
offer a momentary resistance to imperial orders, and thither he
turned. The kingdom of Holland was still nominally independent, and
its trade an object of interest. While England shaped her policy to
favor the licensed or smuggling trade with Dutch ports, the United
States risked their relations with England and France by treating
Holland as an independent neutral. Yet the nominal independence of
Holland was due only to the accident that had made Louis its king,
as it had made his brother Joseph king of Spain,—not wholly with a
view to please them, but also to secure obedience to Napoleon’s
orders and energy to his system. No one would willingly deprive any
member of Napoleon’s family of virtues which the world allowed
them; yet none but a Bonaparte thoroughly understood a Bonaparte,
and Napoleon’s opinion of his brothers, as their opinions of him,
stand highest in authority. Napoleon was often generous and
sometimes forbearing with his brothers, and left them no small
freedom to seek popularity at his expense; but they were nothing
except as they represented him, and their ideas of independence or
of philanthropy showed entire misunderstanding of their situation. Of
all Napoleon’s brothers, Louis was the one with whom he was most
reasonably offended. Lucien at least did not wait to be made a king
before he rebelled; but Louis accepted the throne, and then intrigued
persistently against the Emperor’s orders. From the moment he went
to Holland he assumed to be an independent monarch, devoted to
winning popularity. He would not execute the Berlin Decree until
Napoleon threatened to march an army upon him; he connived at its
evasion; he issued licenses and admitted cargoes as he pleased;
and he did this with such systematic disregard of remonstrance that
Napoleon became at last angry.
July 17, some days after the battle of Wagram, the Emperor
wrote from Vienna to Louis,[112]—
“You complain of a newspaper article; it is France that has a right
to complain of the bad spirit which reigns with you.... It may not be
your fault, but it is none the less true that Holland is an English
province.”
At the same time he ordered Champagny to notify the Dutch

government officially that if it did not of its own accord place itself on
the same footing with France, it would be in danger of war.[113]
While this correspondence was still going on, Armstrong
imagined that he might obtain some advantage by visiting Holland.
He amused himself during the idle August by a journey to
Amsterdam, where he obtained, August 19, a private interview with
King Louis. Three days before, Flushing had capitulated to the
English expedition which was supposed to be threatening Antwerp.
At Vienna Napoleon was negotiating for peace, and between the
obstinacy of Austria and the British attacks on Madrid and Antwerp
he found himself ill at ease. President Madison had just issued his
Proclamation of August 9 reviving the Non-intercourse Act, which
kept open the American trade with Holland. Everywhere the situation
was confused, irritable, and hard to understand. A general system of
cross-purposes seemed to govern the political movements of the
world.
King Louis told Armstrong that he was quarrelling seriously with
the Emperor on account of the American trade, but was bent on
protecting it at all hazards. This declaration to a foreign minister
accredited not to himself but to his brother, showed Louis attempting
with the aid of foreign nations a systematic opposition to Napoleon’s
will. He denounced his brother’s system as “the triumph of immorality
over justice.... The system is bad,—so bad that it cannot last; but in
the mean time we are the sufferers.” Even the British expedition to
Walcheren troubled Louis chiefly because it forced him under his
brother’s despotism. “It is an erring policy, and will have no solid or
lasting effect but that of drawing upon us a French army which will
extinguish all that is left of ancient Holland. Can it be wisdom in
England to see this country a province of France?”
With such comfort as Armstrong could draw from the knowledge
that Napoleon’s brothers were as hostile as President Madison to the
imperial system, he returned to Paris, September 6, to wait the
further development of the Emperor’s plans. He found on his arrival
two notes from Champagny at Vienna. One of these despatches
expressed a civil hope, hardly felt by the Emperor,[114] that
Armstrong would not for the present carry out his project of returning
to America. The other, dated August 22, was nothing less than a
revised and permanent form of the Emperor’s essay on the jus
gentium, which Champagny since May 18 had kept in his portfolio.
[115]
In Champagny’s hands Napoleon’s views lost freshness without

gaining legality. The “village steeple” disappeared, but with some
modification the “floating colony” remained, and the principle of free
seas was carried to its extreme results:—
“A merchant-vessel sailing with all the necessary papers (avec les
expéditions) from its government is a floating colony. To do violence to
such a vessel by visits, by searches, and by other acts of an arbitrary
authority is to violate the territory of a colony; this is to infringe on the
independence of its government.... The right, or rather the pretension,
of blockading by a proclamation rivers and coasts, is as monstrous
(révoltante) as it is absurd. A right cannot be derived from the will or
the caprice of one of the interested parties, but ought to be derived
from the nature of things themselves. A place is not truly blockaded
until it is invested by land and sea.”
Every one could understand that to assert such principles was an
impossibility for neutrals, and was so meant by Napoleon. He had no
thought of making demands which England could accept. The
destruction of her naval power was his favorite object after the year
1805. The battle of Wagram confirmed him in his plan, and Louis’
opposition counted for even less than Armstrong’s diplomacy in
checking the energy of his will. As he ordered Louis, so he ordered
Madison, to obey; and thanks to the obstinacy of Spencer Perceval,
both had no choice but to assist his scheme. As an answer to the
American offer expressed in the Non-intercourse Act, Champagny’s
despatch of August 22 was final; but to preclude a doubt, it closed by
saying that the ports of Holland, of the Elbe and the Weser, of Italy
and of Spain, would not be allowed to enjoy privileges of which
French ports were deprived, and that whenever England should
revoke her blockades and Orders in Council, France would revoke
her retaliatory decrees.
Without suicide, England could hardly accept the principles
required by this note; nor had she reason to suppose that her
acceptance would satisfy Napoleon’s demands. As though to
encourage her in obstinacy, the note was printed in the “Moniteur” of
October 6, by the Emperor’s order, before it could have reached
America. This unusual step served no purpose except to give public
notice that France would support England in restricting American
rights; it strengthened the hands of Spencer Perceval and took away
the last chance of American diplomacy, if a chance still existed. Yet
neither this stroke nor the severity foreshadowed by the secret
Decree of Vienna was the only punishment inflicted by Napoleon on
the United States for the Non-intercourse Act and Erskine’s
arrangement.
The principle of the Vienna Decree required confiscation of
American commerce in retaliation for penalties imposed on French
ships that should knowingly violate the Non-intercourse Act.
Although this rule and the Bayonne Decree seemed to cover all
ordinary objects of confiscation, the Emperor adopted the
supplementary rule that American merchandise was English property
in disguise. In the month of November a cotton-spinner near Paris,
the head of a very large establishment, petitioned for leave to import
about six hundred bales of American cotton. His petition was
returned to him with the indorsement: “Rejected, as the cotton
belongs to American commerce.” The severity of the refusal
surprised every one the more because the alternative was to use
Portuguese—that is to say English—cotton, or to encourage the
consumption of fabrics made wholly in England, of English materials.
[116] Having decided to seize all American merchandise that should
arrive in France on private account, and having taken into his own
hands the business of selling this property as well as of admitting
other merchandise by license, Napoleon protected what became
henceforward his personal interests, by shutting the door to
competition.[117] Armstrong caught glimpses of this stratagem even
before it had taken its finished shape.
“I am privately informed,” wrote Armstrong December 10, “that
General Loison has left Paris charged to take hold of all British
property, or property suspected of being such in the ports of Bilbao,
San Sebastian, Pasages, etc. The latter part of the rule is no doubt
expressly intended to reach American property. With the General goes
a mercantile man who will be known in the market as his friend and
protégé, and who of course will be the exclusive purchaser of the
merchandise which shall be seized and sold as British. This is a
specimen at once of the violence and corruption which enter into the
present system; and of a piece with this is the whole business of
licenses, to which, I am sorry to add, our countrymen lend themselves
with great facility.”
Under such conditions commerce between the United States and
France seemed impossible. One prohibition crowded upon another.
First came the Berlin Decree of Nov. 21, 1806, which turned away or
confiscated every American vessel voluntarily entering a British port
after that date. Second, followed the Milan Decree of Nov. 11, 1807,
which denationalized and converted into English property every
American ship visited by a British cruiser or sent into a British port, or
which had paid any tax to the British government. Third, the
Bayonne Decree of April 5, 1808, sequestered all American vessels
arriving in France subsequent to the embargo, as being presumably
British property. Fourth, the American Non-intercourse Act of March
1, 1809, prohibited all commerce with France or her dependencies.
Fifth, the British Orders in Council of April 26, 1809, established a
blockade of the whole coast of France. Sixth, the secret Decree of
Vienna, of August, 1809, enforced in principle, sequestered every
American vessel arriving within the Emperor’s military control, in
reprisal for the Non-intercourse Act which threatened French ships
with confiscation. Yet with all this, and greatly to General Armstrong’s
displeasure, American ships in considerable numbers entered the
ports of France, and, what was still more incomprehensible, were
even allowed to leave them.
CHAPTER VIII.
Under these circumstances President Madison was to meet
Congress; but bad as his situation was in foreign affairs, his real
troubles lay not abroad but at home. France never counted with him
as more than an instrument to act on England. Erskine and Canning,
by their united efforts, had so mismanaged English affairs that
Madison derived from their mismanagement all the strength he
possessed. The mission of Jackson to Washington retrieved a
situation that offered no other advantage.
Jackson lost no occasion to give the President popularity.
Comprehending at last that his high tone had only helped his
opponent to carry out a predetermined course, Jackson lost self-
confidence without gaining tact. At first he sustained himself by faith
in Canning; but within a short time he heard with alarm the news
from England that Canning was no longer in office or in credit. For a
few days after the rupture he had a right to hope that the quarrel
would not be pressed to a scandal; but November 13, the “National
Intelligencer” published an official statement which embarrassed
Jackson to the last point of endurance.
“I came prepared to treat with a regular government,” he wrote to
his brother,[118] “and have had to do with a mob, and mob leaders.
That I did not show an equal facility with Erskine to be duped by them
has been my great crime.”
That Jackson should be angry was natural, and if he was
abusive, he received an ample equivalent in abuse; but his merits as
a diplomatist were supposed to be his courage and his truth, and
these he could not afford to compromise. He had neither said nor
done more than stood in his express orders. Canning’s instructions
charged Madison with fraud:
“The American government cannot have believed that such an
arrangement as Mr. Erskine consented to accept was conformable to
his instructions.... They cannot by possibility have believed that
without any new motive, and without any apparent change in the
dispositions of the enemy, the British government could have been
disposed at once and unconditionally to give up the system on which
they had been acting.”
This ground Jackson had been ordered to take in any
“preliminary discussion” which might “in all probability” arise before
he could enter on the details of his negotiation. In obedience to these
instructions, and well within their limits, Jackson had gone as near as
he dared to telling the President that he alone was to blame for the
disavowal of Erskine, because Erskine’s instructions “were at the
time in substance made known” to him. In subsequently affirming
that he made no insinuation which he could not substantiate,
Jackson still kept to what he believed the truth; and he reiterated in
private what he insinuated officially, that Erskine had been “duped”
by the American government. November 16 he wrote officially to the
Foreign Office that without the slightest doubt the President had full
and entire knowledge of Erskine’s instruction No. 2.[119] These views
were consistent and not unreasonable, but no man could suppose
them to be complimentary to President Madison; yet November 13
Jackson caused his secretary, Oakeley, to send in his name an
official note to the Secretary of State, complaining of the rupture and
rehearsing the charges, with the conclusion that “in stating these
facts, and in adhering to them, as his duty imperiously enjoined him
to do, Mr. Jackson could not imagine that offence would be taken at
it by the American government, as most certainly none could be
intended on his part.”[120] He then addressed the same counter-
statement as a circular to the various British consuls in the United
States, and caused it to be printed in the newspapers,[121]—thus
making an appeal to the people against their own Government, not
unlike the more famous appeal which the French Minister Genet
made in 1793 against President Washington.
In extremely bad temper Jackson quitted the capital. His wife
wrote to her friends in joy at the prospect of shortening her stay in a
country which could offer her only the tribute of ignorant admiration;
but even she showed a degree of bitterness in her pleasure, and her
comments on American society had more value than many official
documents in explaining the attitude of England toward the United
States:—
“Francis, being accustomed to treat with the civilized courts and
governments of Europe, and not with savage Democrats, half of them
sold to France, has not succeeded in his negotiation.”[122]
At Washington she had seen few ladies besides Mrs. Madison,
“une bonne, grosse femme, de la classe bourgeoise, ... sans
distinction,” and also, to do her justice, “sans prétensions;” who did
the British minister’s wife the honor to copy her toilettes. Immediately
after the rupture Mrs. Jackson went to Baltimore, where she was
received with enthusiasm by society; but Baltimore satisfied her little
better than Washington: “Between ourselves their cuisine is
detestable; coarse table-linen, no claret, champagne and madeira
indifferent.” Only as the relative refinement of New York and Boston
was reached, with the flattery lavished upon the British minister by
the Federalist society of the commercial cities, did Mrs. Jackson and
her husband in some degree recover their composure and their
sense of admitted superiority.
Incredible as the folly of a political party was apt to be, the folly of
the Federalists in taking up Jackson’s quarrel passed the limits of
understanding. After waiting to receive their tone from England, the
Federalist newspapers turned on their own path and raised the cry
that Madison had deceived Erskine, and had knowingly entered into
an arrangement which England could not carry out. The same
newspapers which in April agreed with John Randolph that Canning
had obtained through Erskine all he had ever asked or had a right to
expect, averred in October that Erskine surrendered everything and
got nothing in return. No political majority, still less a minority, could
survive a somersault so violent as this; and the Federalists found
that all their late recruits, and many friends hitherto stanch, deserted
them in the autumn elections. Throughout the country the
Administration was encouraged by great changes in the popular
vote, even before the rupture with Jackson. With confidence,
Madison might expect the more important spring elections to sweep
opposition from his path. Although a whole year, and in some cases
eighteen months, must pass before a new Congress could be
chosen, the people were already near the war point.
Vermont chose a Republican governor and a legislature
Republican in both branches. In Rhode Island, Connecticut, and
New Jersey the Administration recovered more than the ground lost
by the embargo. In Maryland the feud between Samuel Smith and
his opponents was ended by a Republican majority so large that
nothing could prevent Smith’s return to the Senate, although every
one knew that he would carry on a system of personal opposition, if
he dared, and that a moderate Federalist would be less dangerous
to the Administration. In the general return of deserters to the ranks,
the party would not be too strict in its punishments; and the
President set the example by clemency to the worst offender, except
John Randolph, of all the trusted lieutenants in the party service. He
held out a hand to Monroe.
Madison’s reasons for winning Monroe were strong. The more he
had to do with Robert Smith, the more intolerable became the
incubus of Smith’s incompetence. He had been obliged to take the
negotiations with Erskine and Jackson wholly on his own shoulders.
The papers drafted by Smith were, as Madison declared,[123]
brought from the Department of State in a condition “almost always
so crude and inadequate that I was, in the more important cases,
generally obliged to write them anew myself, under the disadvantage
sometimes of retaining through delicacy some mixture of his draft.”
Smith had not even the virtue of dullness. He could not be silent, but
talked openly, and criticised freely the measures of Government,
especially those of commercial restriction.
Complicated with this incessant annoyance was Gallatin’s feud.
The combination of the Smiths with Giles, Leib, and Duane’s
“Aurora” against Gallatin had its counterpart in the Clintonian faction
which made Madison its target; and whenever these two forces
acted together, they made, with the Federalists, a majority of the
Senate. Gallatin saw the necessity of breaking down this
combination of intrigue which had already done incalculable harm by
forcing Robert Smith into the State Department. He foresaw the
effects of its influence in weakening the Treasury in order to expel
himself. On a visit to Monticello in August he spoke plainly to
Jefferson and Madison, and pointed out the probability that he
should be forced to resign. Jefferson reflected six weeks on this
communication, and then wrote entreating him to stand firm.[124]
November 8, the day of the rupture with Jackson, Gallatin answered
Jefferson’s appeal in a long and outspoken letter evidently meant for
communication to Madison:—
“It has seemed to me from various circumstances that those who
thought they had injured were disposed to destroy, and that they were
sufficiently skillful and formidable to effect their object. As I may not,
however, perhaps, see their actions with an unprejudiced eye, nothing
but irresistible evidence both of the intention and success will make
me yield to that consideration.... I do not ask that in the present
situation of our foreign relations the debt be reduced, but only that it
shall not be increased so long as we are not at war. I do not pretend to
step out of my own sphere and to control the internal management of
other departments; but it seems to me that as Secretary of the
Treasury I may ask, that, while peace continues, the aggregate of the
expenditure of those departments be kept within bounds such as will
preserve the equilibrium between the national revenue and
expenditure without recurrence to loans. I cannot consent to act the
part of a mere financier, to become a contriver of taxes, a dealer of
loans, a seeker of resources for the purpose of supporting useless
baubles, of increasing the number of idle and dissipated members of
the community, of fattening contractors, pursers, and agents, and of
introducing in all its ramifications that system of patronage, corruption,
and rottenness which you so justly execrate.”
From this avowal Madison’s difficulties could be understood and
his course foreseen. Very slow to move, he was certain at last to
quarrel with the senatorial faction that annoyed him. He could not but
protect Gallatin, and dismiss Smith. At the end of the vista, however
far the distance, stood the inevitable figure of Monroe. Scarcely
another man in public life could fill precisely the gap, and none
except Armstrong could give strength to the President by joining him.
Perhaps Littleton Tazewell, another distinguished Virginian of the
same school, would have answered the President’s purpose as well
as Monroe; but probably Tazewell would have declined to accept a
seat in the Cabinet of a President whose election he had opposed.
[125] Madison decided to take the first step. He had reason to think
that Monroe repeated his course, at least to the extent of wishing
reconciliation. He authorized Jefferson to act as mediator; and the
Ex-President, who spared no effort for harmony, hastened to tell
Monroe that the government of Louisiana was still at his disposal.
[126] Monroe declined the office as being beneath his previous
positions, but said that he would have accepted the first place in
Madison’s Cabinet, and was sincere in his desire for the success of
the Administration; he even pledged his support, and intimated that
he had lost favor with John Randolph owing to, his exertions for
Madison. When Jefferson reported the result of this interview, the
President replied:[127] “The state of Colonel Monroe’s mind is very
nearly what I had supposed; his willingness to have taken a seat in
the Cabinet is what I had not supposed.” Considering the state of
Monroe’s mind in 1808, Madison might be excused for failing to see
that Monroe would accept the State Department in February, 1809.
Indeed, the suddenness of the change would have startled Monroe’s
best friends; and even in December, 1809, he would have fared ill
had his remarks to Jefferson been brought to John Randolph’s ears.
Monroe’s adhesion having been thus attested, Madison made no
immediate use of the recruit, but held him in reserve until events
should make action necessary. Perhaps this delay was one of
Madison’s constitutional mistakes, and possibly a prompt removal of
Robert Smith might have saved some of the worst disasters that
befell the Government; but in truth Madison’s embarrassments rose
from causes that only time could cure, and were inherent in
American society itself. A less competent administrative system
seldom drifted, by reason of its incompetence, into war with a
superior enemy. No department of the government was fit for its
necessary work.
Of the State Department, its chief, and its long series of
mortifying disasters, enough has been said. In November, 1809, it
stood helpless in the face of intolerable insults from all the European
belligerents. Neither the diplomatic nor the consular system was
better than a makeshift, and precisely where the Government felt
most need of ministers,—at Copenhagen, Stockholm, Berlin, and St.
Petersburg,—it had no diplomatic and but few consular agents, even
these often of foreign allegiance.

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A Useful History of Britain The Politics of Getting Things Done 1St Edition Michael Braddick Full Chapter PDF

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A Useful History of Britain: The Politics

of Getting Things Done 1st Edition

The Technique Of Getting Things Done: Rides for

Programming the Photon: Getting Started with the

Getting the Message: A History of Communications,

The Common Freedom of the People: John Lilburne and the

Never done a history of women's work in media

A History of Britain: 1945 through Brexit Jeremy Black

The Politics of Public Budgeting: Getting and Spending,

Aviation in the Literature and Culture of Interwar

A s ever, I am grateful for the stimulating intellectual

Introduction: From Stonehenge to Global Britain—

1. Political Life: Power Over Our World, Power Over

2. Mobilizing Ideas and the Uses of Collective

3. Material Conditions and the Uses of Collective

4. Organizational Capacity and the Changing Limits

5. Geographies of Collective Institutions and

6. Political Inclusion: Who Makes Things Happen? 151

7. Change Over Time: Phases in the History of

Conclusion: Globalizing the British Past—Parallel

LI S T OF I LLUS TRAT IONS

Misunderstanding of the present is the inevitable consequence of

H umans have probably been on what is now Britain for around

from stone he nge to globa l br ita in

Some of the collective achievements of the late Neolithic are truly

from stone he nge to globa l br ita in

Confronted by these remains, it is natural to wonder how it was

from stone he nge to globa l br ita in

much longer ago, perhaps before farming came to the island. We

from stone he nge to globa l br ita in

spread southwards too. Domestic architecture seems to link the

from stone he nge to globa l br ita in

many person hours devoted to projects like those at Stonehenge

from stone he nge to globa l br ita in

The result is a great variety of mutually dependent and specialized

from stone he nge to globa l br ita in

is this the first book to do it? Why do histories of Britain so often

from stone he nge to globa l br ita in

from stone he nge to globa l br ita in

other geographical region, Great Britain’s political experience has

from stone he nge to globa l br ita in

In that sense this is a history for use. De-­centring Westminster

from stone he nge to globa l br ita in

Three thematic chapters then explore the factors which shape

from stone he nge to globa l br ita in

T he various phases of construction at Stonehenge must have

a collective power. But it also regulates that differential power,

committee. Eventually the drainage committee might do all sorts

the differential power of those coordinating the use of collective

The Roman Empire: Collective Institutions

to Rome, became ‘public land’. Tiberius proposed that no single

through conquest and the spoils of victory—and by the lure of

Figure 1. Hadrian’s Wall

and taxation, and scenes of Gothic horror expressing the power of

Private Property and the Public Good

Much of the history of political life on Britain can be understood

led, within a couple of decades, to a dramatic transfer of wealth to

to demand that their subjects should provide ships, but as the

This is one form of path dependency: that the in­sti­tu­tion­al­

jobs. This can be done to incentivize changes in i­ndividual

coordinating authority—what we think of as London was divided

1 million to nearly 2.4 million. Arrangements for sanitation were

Armstrong informed Secretary Robert Smith[102] that nothing

6. Political Inclusion: Who Makes Things Happen? 151

In that sense this is a history for use. De-centring Westminster

This is one form of path dependency: that the institutional

jobs. This can be done to incentivize changes in individual