The Sinews of Power and European State-Building Theory

Many chapters in this book, as well as numerous reviews, have emphasized the importance of John Brewer’s The Sinews of Power for the historiography of eighteenth-century Britain. ¹ Yet this is not the only field to which Brewer’s book speaks. Its findings are, if anything, of even greater significance for those political scientists and historical sociologists who are currently engaged in attempts to construct a comprehensive theory of European state-building. This is so because the revisionist picture that Brewer paints of the British war machine after 1688 undermines basic assumptions found in existing models of war and state development in early-modern Europe. This brief chapter will first examine the implications of The Sinews of Power for the state-building literature, and then go on to outline a new perspective on European political development that can better accommodate both Brewer’s results and those of other authors working in the oft-neglected subfields of administrative, financial and military history.