A work of extraordinary range and striking originality, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen traces the global history of written constitutions from the 1750s to the twentieth century, modifying accepted narratives and uncovering the close connections between the making of constitutions and the making of war. In the process, Linda Colley both reappraises famous constitutions and recovers those that have been marginalized but were central to the rise...
A work of extraordinary range and striking originality, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen traces the global history of written constitutions from the 1750s to the twentieth century, modifying accepted narratives and uncovering the close connections between the making of constitutions and the making of war. In the process, Linda Colley both reappraises famous constitutions and recovers those that have been marginalized but were central to the rise...
Filling a crucial void in our understanding of world history, Linda Colley reconfigures the rise of the modern world over three centuries through the advent of written constitutions. Her absorbing work challenges accepted narratives, focusing on rulers like Catherine the Great, who wrote her enlightened Nakaz years before the French Revolution, African visionaries like Sierra Leone's James Africanus Beale Horton, and Tunisias's soldier-constit...
The United Kingdom, Great Britain, the British Isles, the Home Nations: such a wealth of different names implies uncertainty and contention - and an ability to invent and adjust. In a year that sees a Scottish referendum on independence, Linda Colley analyses some of the forces that have unified Britain in the past.She examines the mythology of Britishness, and how far - and why - it has faded. She discusses the Acts of Union with Wales, Scotl...
Public services play an essential role in society, and yet their image is often poor, fed by television programmes such as 'Yes Minister'. Common perceptions include that they have little real merit, do not work hard, are too powerful, are impossible to dismiss, and could benefit from some private sector experience. This study considers how the maligned career service model of public sector employment has evolved. It outlines the traditional m...
In this prize-winning book, Linda Colley interweaves political, military, and social history to recount how England, Wales, and Scotland joined together to form a new British nation and how heroes and politicians, artists and writers, and ordinary men and women helped forge a British identity. 82 b&w, illustrations.
Born in 1735, Elizabeth Marsh traveled farther and more adventurously than any other woman, and most men, of her time. Relating Marsh's extraordinary accomplishments, Colley brilliantly interweaves a vivid, detailed personal story with an evocation of a crucial phase of early globalization.
In this path-breaking book Linda Colley reappraises the rise of the biggest empire in global history. Excavating the lives of some of the multitudes of Britons held captive in the lands their own rulers sought to conquer, Colley also offers an intimate understanding of the peoples and cultures of the Mediterranean, North America, India, and Afghanistan. Here are harrowing, sometimes poignant stories by soldiers and sailors and their womenfolk,...
In English history the years between 1714 and 1760 are peculiar in two ways. They have received only scant attention from historians, and they witnessed the exclusion of the tory sector of the nation's landed elite from all central as well as from prime local offices. In this book Linda Colley explores the fate of the tory party which has dominated both Parliament and the constituencies throughout of the reigns of William III and Anne. She ref...
