Review: Britain and the Seventy Years War,1744–1815

This perceptive, accessible and important book consolidates the work of many scholars over the last 30 years. Its central thesis is that the way we perceive the Anglo-French wars needs reshaping and that instead of thinking of ‘a hundred year war’, we should very specifically see them as lasting for 70 years, from 1744 until 1815. Central to his critique is pointing to the flaws in interpretation of John Brewer’s Sinews of Power, which, at the moment of its very considerable impact on publication in 1989, skewed our understanding of eighteenth-century British war-making capacity. By considering the years 1689–1783, which includes the Anglo-French peace from 1721–1733, and not taking the story to 1815, Brewer omits developments in state and society when they were at their most crucial. One might add that the core material for Brewer’s book is drawn from the early eighteenth century and that by taking it as far as the end of the American Revolutionary war, he stretches the evidence. Page makes a strong case for his redefining dates, noting that if the formal declaration of war between Britain and France in 1744 is taken as a starting point, between then and 1815 the two countries were at war for 42 out of 71 years. Further, if the period of 1749–1755 is included, a time of conflict between the two countries in India and North America, then hostilities took place for 70 per cent of the time. When seen in this context, the sheer intensity of the 70-year conflict after 1744 can be fully appreciated.

Brewer christened his new concept the ‘fiscal-military state’, thus sidelining the navy which, year by year, in war and peace, was the biggest consumer of revenue raised by taxes. Page calculates that over the 70 years the army cost the country 55 per cent of the taxes raised, and the navy 45 per cent. However, this figure for armies includes large spikes in wartime costs for subsidies to continental allies. It was the continually growing infrastructure required to keep a navy at sea that kept the taxes high. As Patrick O’Brien and Nicholas Rodger have been advocating for years, ‘fiscal-naval’ state would be a far more appropriate term.

However, Page has given himself a far wider brief than consideration of the navy and his reading list is long. He welds together the arguments of political, social and cultural issues explored by Linda Colley and Katherine Wilson, the naval strategy and effectiveness of Daniel Baugh and Nicholas Rodger, the army and society studies of Stephen Conway, the economics of Patrick O’Brien, the victualling bureaucratic improvements analysed by Christian Buchet and the health of the armed forces recently chronicled by Erica Charters, and many others. It makes for a sharp and powerful synthesis.

The preconditions for such a timely study have occurred only recently. One step change in the historiography took place around the turn of this century. Until then, the opinion of imperial historians had held sway: that Britain’s navy was an aggressive instrument forged to carve out overseas territory. A close analysis of the ships and men stationed in home waters, compared to the miniscule numbers which were sent to distant stations showed where Britain’s priorities lay. Though Rodger had been arguing this for years, his Command of the Ocean, published in 2004, seemed to settle the argument. As he said in his conclusion: ‘Fear provided the motive to maintain a fleet whose primary purpose was always defensive’ (p. 577). ¹ If this was not so, how could the study of armed forces be linked so closely with society? Successive governments were willing to raise taxes and increase the national debt year after year; Parliament would not have agreed if the Lords and MPs had been more fearful of the consequences of not doing so.

Another influential book was published in the same year, Exceptionalism and Industrialism: Britain and its European Rivals, 1688–1815, edited by Leandro Prados de la Escosura, which was the proceedings of a largely economic conference held to honour Patrick O’Brien. ² Not only did it breach the traditional reluctance of economic historians to engage with the consequences of war, but it led to a series of international conferences and comparative studies on the effectiveness of different European states in spending the taxes that they raised. Brewer had been primarily concerned with the efficiency of tax raising. Now the other half of the equation was being tackled.

Most telling in Page’s Seventy Years War is that the development of state and society can be seen clearly. Historians in grappling with the British combination of state and private sector have come up with a number of labels: Apart from ‘fiscal-naval state’, from his reading Page lists ‘caring state’, ‘contractor state’, ‘bureaucratic state’, ‘entrepreneurial state’ and ‘infrastructure state’. His skill is to find a path through all these interpretations. The book is difficult to fault: some graphs to back the financial complexities would have been useful, but these are provided in a recent article by Page in the August 2015 number of War and Society. In addition, his full bibliography can be found on his page on the University of Tasmania website. Both should be read as important addenda to this book.

The benefit of Page’s analysis is that it demonstrates the continuity of principles which held good until the end of the wars. What changed later was the immense scale of hostilities. Thus the Western Squadron and effective blockade was in place by the Seven Years War, as were all the support mechanisms: the victualling, ordnance and dockyards, and their contractors, naval personnel recruitment, the contract system for every sort of service, shipbuilding, transports, provisions and a countrywide agricultural industry increasingly geared to providing provisions and fresh food stuffs to London, the naval bases and the south coast, where regular and militia troops were encamped to repel possible invasion – again, a recurring principle of war against France. It was the private sector that changed and expanded, bringing about the revolution in industrial processes, with the resultant improvements in iron and gunpowder, better quality and quantities of block-making, copper sheathing met increasing demand, the whole made more efficient by improvements in steam, canals and roads. While the state yards maintained ships and equipment and distributed stores, the private sector was responsible for the ever-expanding production of ships, guns, small arms, uniform and equipment.

The government departments responsible for these contracts held firm, though under cumulative wartime pressures the bureaucracies of all three services were forced by Parliamentary Commissions to reform themselves between 1807 and 1812, particularly to improve government accounting. Only in manpower, on land and at sea, was Britain to remain weak. Page points out that perceptions persisting from the Brewer thesis have obscured the danger of Britain’s situation at various points in the Seventy Years War, and at no point was the danger greater than at the end. Between 1809 and the first half of 1812, survival was the issue, and political will was fragile. Finally, after his desperate escape from Elba in February 1815, Napoleon planned to defeat the Anglo-Dutch army under Wellington because he surmised – probably correctly – that a French victory would bring down Liverpool’s government and the stock market, upon which all depended. And until the last hour of the battle, Napoleon thought he had won. Not only was Waterloo, in Wellington’s words, ‘the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life’, but so was the whole of the Seventy Years War. We should move on from Brewer and use Page’s Seventy Years War as the primary text for this subject.

Roger KnightInstitute of Historical Research, University of London, UK