The Political Evolution of the Old Regime, 1715–89 355riots, killing 285 members of the crowd.
Gordon was tried for treason and acquitted; his cam-
paign delayed Catholic emancipation for fifty years.
Britain and the Struggles of Empire
The eighteenth century was an age of nearly constant
warfare for Britain; wars were fought in Europe, in
North America, in India, and on the high seas. The
British contested both French and Spanish power in
Europe—fearing the hegemony of either Catholic
power—and battled the French for global empire. And
British military policy was successful in both objectives.
The War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14) checked
the French pursuit of continental hegemony, and a si-
multaneous war in North America (Queen Anne’s War)
resulted in a significant growth in English power. The
War of the Quadruple Alliance (1718–20) seriously
curtailed Spanish power.
War was one of the few political questions that
deeply interested the Hanoverian kings. George I and
George II gladly left English domestic politics in the
hands of Walpole, but they resisted his policy of peace
and international commerce. Both kings felt that the
English army and navy represented the best defense of
their Hanoverian homeland, and they accepted costly
warfare to defend it. George II was the last king of En-
gland to take personal command of an army in the
field, fighting in the War of the Austrian Succession in
- George III thus inherited a huge national debt
(£138 million) along with the throne, the result of mili-
tary profligacy. He, too, fought constant wars, how-
ever, and quintupled the English national debt to
£800 million (see table 19.1).
The immense war debt that King George III inher-
ited was the cost of participation in the first true world
war—the Seven Years’ War in Europe (1756–63), and
its simultaneous theaters known as the French and In-
dian Wars in North America and the Bengal Wars in In-
dia. This global war produced a mixed blessing: The
British Empire won but wound up deeper in debt;
Britain became the dominant colonial power in the
world, but she thereby acquired even greater adminis-
trative costs. The British nation—like many others dur-
ing the Old Regime—was loathe to pay the taxes
needed to repay war debts, support military expansion,
and meet the expenses of empire. In 1764 the Tory
government chose a compromise it thought safe: New
taxes would be imposed in the colonies, which were the
source of many imperial costs, but not in the British
isles. The issue of this policy was the Stamp Act of
1765, a tax on the American colonies, requiring that a
tax stamp be attached to official documents such as a
will, a liquor license, or a college degree. The furious
reaction in many colonies held that such taxes could
not be imposed under British law without the consent
of those being taxed. Representatives of nine American
colonies (Britain possessed more than thirty colonies in
the Americas) assembled in a Stamp Tax Congress and
adopted an angry resolution challenging the decision of
Parliament as subverting “the rights and liberties of the
colonists.”
The confrontation over taxation simmered for a
decade and led to the American Revolution of
1776–83. Parliament initially backed down in the face
of American protests and rescinded the Stamp Tax in
1766, but renewed protests led Parliament to adopt the
punitive Coercive Acts of 1774 and to quarter troops in
Boston. A few months later, in April 1775, the battles ofWar Government Deficit
expenditure income in loans Percentage
War (in millions) (in millions) (in millions) borrowed
War of the Spanish Succession, 1702–13 £93.6 £64.2 £29.4 31.4
War of the Austrian Succession, 1739–48 £95.6 £65.9 £29.7 31.1
Seven Years’ War, 1756–63 £160.6 £100.6 £60.0 37.4
American Revolution, 1776–83 £236.5 £141.9 £94.6 39.9
Total £586.3 £372.6 £213.7 36.4
Source: Adapted from data in Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers(New York, N.Y.: Random House, 1987); p. 81.TABLE 19.1British War Finances, 1702–83