The Making of a Great Power: Late Stuart and Early Georgian Britain, 1660-1722

By Geoffrey S. Holmes

Book Overview

The fruit of a lifetime's work by one of the country's leading historians, this is history writing on a grand scale. By the 1790s Britain was constitutionally united and newly established as a major... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0582484391
• ISBN13: 9780582484399
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Longman Publishing Group
• Length: 506 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Parliament became paramount

Holmes gives a detailed account of how Britain rose to be a Great Power in Europe. At the start of the era he covers, Britain still ranked below France, Spain and Portugal. But Britain then went on to consolidate itself, as Great Britain from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The national unity was also aided by generally wise policies of the government. A key idea in the book is that the Restoration of the Monarchy was predicated on the Monarch acknowledging the primacy of Parliament. Well ahead of any other major nation of the time. Though Parliament was dominated by the House of Lords and the well to do in the Commons, it gave enough feedback about policies to ensure that they would often be reasonable. A vast contrast to the autocracies in the rest of Europe. An American reader can see clearly the roots of American society being formed here. Not just in the literal sense of the British colonies in North America. But in the deeper meaning of elected government and no divine right of kings.