Over the long eighteenth century English governance was transformed by large adjustments to the legal instruments and processes of power. This book documents and analyzes these shifts and focuses upon the changing relations between legal authority and the English people.

Over the long eighteenth century English governance was transformed by large adjustments to the legal instruments and processes of power. This book documents and analyzes these shifts and focuses upon the changing relations between legal authority and the English people.

Over the long eighteenth century English governance was transformed by large adjustments to the legal instruments and processes of power. This book documents and analyzes these shifts and focuses upon the changing relations between legal authority and the English people.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2018 BY THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE AND SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE By a prize-winning young historian, an authoritative work that reframes the Industrial Revolution, the expansion of British empire, and emergence of industrial capitalism by presenting them as inextricable from the gun trade "A fascinating and important glimpse into how violence fueled the industrial revolution, Priya Satia's book stuns with deep scholarship and sparkling prose."--Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies We have long understood the Industrial Revolution as a triumphant story of innovation and technology. Empire of Guns, a rich and ambitious new book by award-winning historian Priya Satia, upends this conventional wisdom by placing war and Britain's prosperous gun trade at the heart of the Industrial Revolution and the state's imperial expansion. Satia brings to life this bustling industrial society with the story of a scandal: Samuel Galton of Birmingham, one of Britain's most prominent gunmakers, has been condemned by his fellow Quakers, who argue that his profession violates the society's pacifist principles. In his fervent self-defense, Galton argues that the state's heavy reliance on industry for all of its war needs means that every member of the British industrial economy is implicated in Britain's near-constant state of war. Empire of Guns uses the story of Galton and the gun trade, from Birmingham to the outermost edges of the British empire, to illuminate the nation's emergence as a global superpower, the roots of the state's role in economic development, and the origins of our era's debates about gun control and the "military-industrial complex" -- that thorny partnership of government, the economy, and the military. Through Satia's eyes, we acquire a radically new understanding of this critical historical moment and all that followed from it. Sweeping in its scope and entirely original in its approach, Empire of Guns is a masterful new work of history -- a rigorous historical argument with a human story at its heart.

This book draws upon three overlapping bodies of work to generate fresh approaches to the study of crime and criminal justice in Britain and Ireland between 1660 and 1850: the conceptual lens of the "public sphere", "performativity" and speech act theory, and the history of the emotions. It opens new perspectives on the theatre of justice.

The first English translation of a comprehensive legal history of Europe from the early middle ages to the twentieth century, encompassing both the common aspects and the original developments of different countries. As well as legal scholars and professionals, it will appeal to those interested in the general history of European civilisation.

New analysis and interpretation of law and legal institutions in the "long eighteenth century". Law and legal institutions were of huge importance in the governance of Georgian society: legislation expanded the province of administrative authority out of all proportion, while the reach of the common law and its communal traditions of governance diminished, at least outside British North America. But what did the rule of law mean to eighteenth-century people, and how did it connect with changing experiences of law in all their bewildering complexity?This question has received much recent critical attention, but despite widespread agreement about Law's significance as a key to unlock so much which was central to contemporary life, as a whole previous scholarship has only offered a fragmented picture of the Laws in their social meanings and actions. Through a broader-brush approach, The British and their Laws in the Eighteenth Century contributes fresh analyses of law in England andBritish settler colonies, c. 1680-1830; its expert contributors consider among other matters the issues of participation, central-local relations, and the maintenance of common law traditions in the context of increasing legislative interventions and grants of statutory administrative powers. Contributors: SIMON DEVEREAUX, MICHAEL LOBBAN, DOUGLAS HAY, JOANNA INNES, WILFRED PREST, C.W. BROOKS, RANDALL MCGOWEN, DAVID THOMAS KONIG, BRUCE KERCHER

The Long Eighteenth Century was the Age of Revolutions, including the first sexual revolution. In this era, sexual toleration began and there was a marked increase in the discussion of morality, extra-marital sex, pornography and same-sex relationships in both print and visual culture media. William Gibson and Joanne Begiato here consider the ways in which the Church of England dealt with sex and sexuality in this period. Despite the backdrop of an increasingly secularising society, religion continued to play a key role in politics, family life and wider society and the eighteenth-century Church was still therefore a considerable force, especially in questions of morality. This book integrates themes of gender and sexuality into a broader understanding of the Church of England in the eighteenth century. It shows that, rather than distancing itself from sex through diminishing teaching, regulation and punishment, the Church not only paid attention to it, but its attitudes to sex and sexuality were at the core of society's reactions to the first sexual revolution.