ABSTRACT
The subsequent volume in this series, covering the period 1783–1870, has been entitled by Eric Evans The Forging of the Modern State. It was self-evidently not a ‘modern’ state which in 1783 signed away its American colonies and had an unprecedentedly youthful prime minister wished on it by its king. The last chapter of the present book, dealing with the painful and mainly abortive birth-pangs of reform, will have made this abundantly clear, as will many of the other chapters in Parts Two and Three.
