Strains on Europe's Bureaucratization of Violence 183
contracting and sustained by the Bank of England’s credit therefore
arose in France; or, more accurately, nationwide markets remained
slender and weak—something to be planned for, as in the Le
Creusot-Indret scheme, but not yet firmly and routinely in being.^56
These structural weaknesses meant that the French never caught up
with the Royal Navy, even though in the second half of the eighteenth
century French warships were usually better designed than their
British equivalents, and the government continued to aspire to naval
parity or predominance.
Great Britain, for its part, reacted to its defeats of 1776–83 by
improving the financial, administrative, and supply organization of the
Royal Navy.^57 Even though unsuccessful, the fact that in the War of
American Independence the British government maintained up to
90,000 soldiers overseas, most of whom were fed and supplied en
tirely from Great Britain, was a remarkable administrative feat. In
effect, the army and its supply needs were superimposed upon the
navy’s already considerable wartime demands upon the British econ
omy. After intense administrative friction, the Navy Board took re
sponsibility in 1779 for delivering army supplies to America. Despite
shipping shortages it thereafter managed to prevent the army from
running out of food or other necessities, though persistent uncertainty
and long delays in communication and the even longer delays in deliv
ery drastically hampered all the strategic moves planned in New York
and London.
Earlier in the century, British wars had been fought under circum
stances that permitted army units sent overseas to procure food,
horses, and transport on the spot, whether in America, India, or on
the European continent. After 1775, however, the American patriots
were able to prevent British troops from having more than sporadic
access to local supplies. This took the authorities in London com
pletely aback. But they had at their disposal a relatively efficient naval
procurement system which, in a pinch, could be expanded to accom
modate the requirements of thousands of soldiers. This saved the
- For army bread contractors and their tendency to dictate troop movements in the
field, see Kennett, The French Armies in the Seven Years War, pp. 97–104. On the absence
of a nationwide commercial integration in France, see Edward Fox, History in Geo
graphic Perspective: The Other France (New York, 1971).
- P. K. Crimmin, “Admiralty Relations with the Treasury, 1783–1806: The Prepa
ration of Naval Estimates and the Beginnings of Treasury Control,” Mariner’s Mirror 53
(1967): 63–72; Bernard Pool, Navy Board Contracts, 1660–1832 (Hamden, Conn.,
1966), pp. 111–15; Albion, Forests and Sea Power, pp. 45 ff. British army reform, for the
most part, waited until after 1795. See Richard Glover, Peninsular Preparation. 1795–
1809 (Cambridge, 1963).
