This text offers a picture of eighteenth-century England. It ranges from princes to paupers, and from the metropolis to smallest hamlet. It offers vivid images of the thought, politics, work and recreation of Englishmen at his time.

The period from 1688-1820 was marked throughout with riots and rebellions, seditions and strikes, as the lower classes rebelled against the state bias towards the interests of higher social groups. Drawing on recent work on demography, labor, and law, this readable history of the period focuses on the experience of the eighty percent of the population who made up England's "lower orders." Hay and Rogers provide fresh insights into food shortages, changes in poor relief, use of the criminal law, and the shifts in social power caused by industrialization that would bring about the birth of working-class radicalism.

Robert Travers' analysis of British conquests in late eighteenth-century India shows how new ideas were formulated about the construction of empire. After the British East India Company conquered the vast province of Bengal, Britons confronted the apparent anomaly of a European trading company acting as an Indian ruler. Responding to a prolonged crisis of imperial legitimacy, British officials in Bengal tried to build their authority on the basis of an 'ancient constitution', supposedly discovered among the remnants of the declining Mughal Empire. In the search for an indigenous constitution, British political concepts were redeployed and redefined on the Indian frontier of empire, while stereotypes about 'oriental despotism' were challenged by the encounter with sophisticated Indian state forms. This highly original book uncovers a forgotten style of imperial state-building based on constitutional restoration, and in the process opens up new points of connection between British, imperial and South Asian history.

This is a portrait of 18th century England, from its princes to its paupers, from its metropolis to its smallest hamlet. The topics covered include - diet, housing, prisons, rural festivals, bordellos, plays, paintings, and work and wages.