The abolition of the Scottish and Irish Parliaments in 1707 and 1800 created a United Kingdom centred upon the Westminster legislature. This text discusses what this meant for the four nations involved, and how conceptions of English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh identities were affected.

This groundbreaking volume address these questions from a variety of perspectives, showing how the parliaments at Dublin, Edinburgh and, Westminster, were seen and used in very different ways by people from very different communities.

This collection of chapters focuses on the regulation of the British economy in the long eighteenth century as a means to understand the synergies between political, social and economic change as Britain was transformed into a global power. Inspired by recent research on consumerism and credit, an international team of leading academics examine the ways in which state and society both advanced and responded to fundamental economic changes. The studies embrace all aspects of the regulatory process, from developing ideas on the economy, to the passage of legislation, and to the negotiation of economic policy and change in practice. They range broadly over Britain and its empire and also consider Britain's exceptionality through comparative studies. Together, the book challenges the general characterization of the period as a shift from a regulated economy to a more laissez-faire system, highlighting the uncertain relationship between the state and economic interests across the long eighteenth century.

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.

In Forging Nations, Blaazer studies the relationships between money, power, and nationality in England, Scotland, and Ireland from the first attempts to unify their currencies following the Union of the Crowns in 1603 to the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis. Through successive crises spanning four centuries, Forging Nations examines critical struggles over monetary power between the state and its creditors, and within and between nations during the long, multifaceted process of creating the United Kingdom as a monetary as well as a political union. It shows how and why centuries of monetary dysfunction and conflict eventually gave way to the era of the sterling gold standard, when elite and popular beliefs about money converged around a set of almost unassailable monetary dogmas that transcended differences of nationality, party, and class. Sustained by a mixture of historical myths and imperial hubris, this consensus effortlessly reinforced the authority and served the interests of the monetary elite, even after its economic foundations had collapsed under the pressure of war and international competition. The book concludes by showing how the end of the UK's global hegemony and the prospect of Scottish independence have resuscitated historical differences between England, Ireland, and Scotland in attitudes to currency's role in defining national identity, while the Global Financial Crisis has revived forgotten debates over the nature of money and monetary power.

The Glorious Revolution of 1688–9 transformed the role of parliament in Britain and its empire. Large numbers of statutes resulted, with most concerning economic activity. Julian Hoppit here provides the first comprehensive account of these acts, revealing how government affected economic life in this critical period prior to the Industrial Revolution, and how economic interests across Britain used legislative authority for their own benefit. Through a series of case studies, he shows how ideas, interests, and information influenced statutory action in practice. Existing frameworks such as 'mercantilism' and the 'fiscal-military state' fail to capture the full richness and structural limitations of how political power influenced Britain's precocious economic development in the period. Instead, finely grained statutory action was the norm, guided more by present needs than any grand plan, with regulatory ambitions constrained by administrative limitations, and some parts of Britain benefiting much more than others.

The concept of the 'fiscal-military state', popularised by John Brewer in 1989, has become familiar, even commonplace, to many historians of eighteenth-century England. Yet even at the time of its publication the book caused controversy, and the essays in this volume demonstrate how recent work on fiscal structures, military and naval contractors, on parallel developments in Scotland and Ireland, and on the wider political context, has challenged the fundamentals of this model in increasingly sophisticated and nuanced ways. Beginning with a historiographical introduction that places The Sinews of Power and subsequent work on the fiscal-military state within its wider contexts, and a commentary by John Brewer that responds to the questions raised by this work, the chapters in this volume explore topics as varied as finance and revenue, the interaction of the state with society, the relations between the military and its contractors, and even the utility of the concept of the fiscal-military state. It concludes with an afterword by Professor Stephen Conway, situating the essays in comparative contexts, and highlighting potential avenues for future research. Taken as a whole, this volume offers challenging and imaginative new perspectives on the fiscal-military structures that underpinned the development of modern European states from the eighteenth century onwards.