Originally published: London : Century Hutchinson, 1988.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Before the revolution, the English state in the medieval and early modern eras;
Patterns of military efforts;
Civil administration, the central offices of government;
Money, money, money, the growth in debts and taxes;
Paradoxes of state power;
Parameters of war;
War and taxes;
Politics of information, public knowledge and private interest;
Conclusion.

This powerful interpretation of English history provides a completely new framework for understanding how Britain emerged in the eighteenth century as a major international power. [The author's] analysis makes clear that the drastic increase in Britain's military involvement (and success) in Europe and the expansion of her commercial and imperial interests would not have happened without a concurrent radical increase in taxation, along with a surge in deficit financing and the growth of a substantial public administration. Warfare and taxes reshaped the English economy, and at the heart of these dramatic changes lay an issue that is still very much with us today: the tension between a nation's aspirations to be a major power and fear of the domestic consequences of such an ambition - namely, the loss of liberty. [He] poses another question of great importance ... how did a small island, of no great population, and which had, for the most part, played an insignificant role in seventeenth-century Europe, transform itself, in the space of sixty years, into a great naval power with an immense empire?