Focusing on the institutions and players of central and local government during an era of great transformation, Peter Jupp examines the cohesive nature of the British state, and how Britain was governed between 1688 and 1848. Divided into two parts, bisected by the accession of George III in 1760, this study: examines the changes to the framework and function of executive government presents an analysis of its achievements, the composition and functions of Parliament explores Parliament’s role in government looks at the interaction between the executive, Parliament and the public. Providing new insights into the formulation of notions and traditions of legislation, the public sphere and popular politics, The Governing of Britain is an essential guide to a formative era in political life.

This book examines the relationship between imperial governance and political economy in eighteenth-century Britain, particularly in Canada and Ireland. It is concerned with the way economic ideology and party politics were mutually constitutive; and with the way extra-parliamentary interests both facilitated, and were co-opted into, strategies of governance and commercial regulation. Rather than treat political economy as a pre-existing intellectual orthodoxy that shaped imperial policymaking, it focuses on the ways in which economic thought was generated in moments of imperial crisis – especially those where politicians, commercial interest groups, and pamphleteer economists were forced to wrestle with the tensions between economic growth, political authority, and social stability. By rooting economic discourse and debate in specific problems of imperial commerce and administration, and by highlighting the many different actors and negotiations that produced economic policy, it argues that the transition from mercantilism to liberalism – the shift from protectionism to free trade – is a flawed description of eighteenth-century developments in economic thought.

Jeremy Black sets the politics of eighteenth century Britain into the fascinating context of social, economic, cultural, religious and scientific developments. The second edition of this successful text by a leading authority in the field has now been updated and expanded to incorporate the latest research and scholarship.

Nancy Christie innovatively and significantly transforms the writing of Quebec history between 1763 and 1837 by locating Quebec within new British practices of imperial governance asserted in the wake of the Seven Years War. Breaking with the conventional master-narrative of the era as one ofgradual integration between French- and English-speaking communities, accompanied by incremental political and social liberalization, Nancy Christie presents the six decades following the Conquest as a period of assertive British strategies for assimilating Quebec's French and Catholic majority, andrefurbished authoritarianism deployed to arrest the spread of revolution in the Atlantic world. Brilliantly advanced, this new narrative of post-Conquest Quebec builds upon entirely new research meticulously gleaned from over 20,000 cases from the criminal and civil judicial archives and a sustainedexamination of both official and unofficial political and social discourses.This study charts both the British practices of colonial rule, which sought the assimilation of non-British "others" through both formal modes of law and governance, and the consumption of British manufactured goods, and the contestation of these through the daily resistance of ordinary men andwomen. In so doing, Christie identifies Quebec as a case study with which to open a new trajectory in the wider study of the British Empire. Her striking conclusion urges a shift in historical focus from the interaction between European colonizers and racialized others, to the centrality ofpractices of rule designed to govern European subaltern peoples.

The elemental power of food politics has not been fully appraised. Food marketing and consumption were matters of politics as much as economics as England became a market society. In times of dearth, concatenations of food riots, repression, and relief created a maturing politics of provisions. Over three centuries, some eight hundred riots crackled in waves across England. Crowds seized wagons, attacked mills and granaries, and lowered prices in marketplaces or farmyards. Sometimes rioters parleyed with magistrates. More often both acted out a well-rehearsed political minuet that evolved from Tudor risings and state policies down to a complex culmination during the Napoleonic Wars. 'Provision politics' thus comprised both customary negotiations over scarcity and hunger, and 'negotiations' of the social vessel through the turbulence of dearth. Occasionally troops killed rioters, or judges condemned them to the gallows, but increasingly riots prompted wealthy citizens to procure relief supplies. In short, food riots worked: in a sense they were a first draft of the welfare state. This pioneering analysis connects a generation of social protest studies spawned by E.P. Thompson's essay on the 'moral economy' with new work on economic history and state formation. The dynamics of provision politics that emerged during England's social, economic and political transformations should furnish fruitful models for analyses of 'total war' and famine as well as broader transitions elsewhere in world history.

Democracy cannot function if the public loses faith in politicians, and that faith will be lost if politicians abuse their power with impunity. This book analyses the criminal offence of misconduct in office, and explains how it should be used, along with other measures, to hold politicians to account for abuse of their position.

English Administrative Law from 1550 systematically elaborates and contextualizes the origins of administrative law. It upends conventional thinking, charting the development of administrative law from the mid-16th century with an in-depth examination of primary legal materials, statute, and case law.

The Stuart Age provides an accessible introduction to England's century of civil war and revolution, including the causes of the English Civil War; the nature of the English Revolution; the aims and achievements of Oliver Cromwell; the continuation of religious passion in the politics of Restoration England; and the impact of the Glorious Revolution on Britain. The fifth edition has been thoroughly revised and updated by Peter Gaunt to reflect new work and changing trends in research on the Stuart age. It expands on key areas including the early Stuart economic, religious and social context; key military events and debates surrounding the English Civil War; colonial expansion, foreign policy and overseas wars; and significant developments in Scotland and Ireland. A new opening chapter provides an important overview of current historiographical trends in Stuart history, introducing readers to key recent work on the topic. The Stuart Age is a long-standing favourite of lecturers and students of early modern British history, and this new edition is essential reading for those studying Stuart Britain.

As the party that has won wars, reversed recessions and held prime ministerial power more times than any other, the Conservatives have played an undoubtedly crucial role in the shaping of contemporary British society. And yet, the leaders who have stood at its helm - from Sir Robert Peel to David Cameron, via Benjamin Disraeli, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher - have steered the party vessel with enormously varying degrees of success. With the widening of the franchise, revolutionary changes to social values and the growing ubiquity of the media, the requirements, techniques and goals of Conservative leadership since the party's nineteenth-century factional breakaway have been forced to evolve almost beyond recognition - and not all its leaders have managed to keep up. This comprehensive and enlightening book considers the attributes and achievements of each leader in the context of their respective time and diplomatic landscape, offering a compelling analytical framework by which they may be judged, detailed personal biographies from some of the country's foremost political critics, and exclusive interviews with former leaders themselves. An indispensable contribution to the study of party leadership, British Conservative Leaders is the essential guide to understanding British political history and governance through the prism of those who created it.