Britain's fiscal‐military state in the eighteenth century: Recent trends in historiography

Abstract

John Brewer's argument that eighteenth‐century Britain developed a centralized and effective fiscal‐military state that allowed it to become a great power has been instrumental in making early modern state‐building an important field of inquiry for historians. New directions in the field explore conflicting eighteenth‐century ideologies, the notion of a ‘naval‐military’ state, the non‐military dimensions of the state, the nature of the Irish and Scottish fiscal‐military states, the relationship between Britain's central state and colonial states, and the relationship between the state and the informal actors who served it.