The gun, the ship, and the pen : warfare, constitutions, and the making of the modern world

The gun, the ship, and the pen Warfare, constitutions, and the making of the modern world

Linda Colley

Book - 2021

"A groundbreaking work that retells modern history through the rise and spread of written constitutions-some enlightened, many oppressive-to every corner of the globe. Filling a crucial void in our understanding of world history, Linda Colley reconfigures the rise of the modern world over three centuries through the advent of written constitutions. Her absorbing work challenges accepted narratives, focusing on rulers like Catherine the Great, who wrote her enlightened Nakaz years before the French Revolution; African visionaries like Sierra Leone's James Africanus Beale Horton; and Tunisias's soldier-constitutionalist Khayr-al-Din, who championed constitutional reform in the Muslim world. Demonstrating how constitutions repea...tedly evolved in tandem with warfare, and how they were used to free, but also exclude, people (especially women and indigenous populations), this handsomely illustrated history-with its pageant of powerful monarchs, visionary lawmakers, and insurrectionist rebels-evokes The Silk Roads in its range and ambition. Whether reinterpreting the lasting influence of Japan's 1889 Meiji constitution or exploring the first constitution to enfranchise women in tiny Pitcairn Island in 1838, this book is one of the most original and absorbing histories in decades"--

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Subjects
Constitutional law > Political aspects.
Constitutional history.
War (International law)
Military art and science.
Implied powers (Constitutional law)
Published
New York, NY : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a Division of W. W. Norton & Company [2021]
Language
English
Main Author
Linda Colley (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
502 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9780871403162
  • Introduction
  • Part 1. Into and Out of Europe
  • Chapter 1. The Multiple Trajectories of War
  • Corsica
  • The Wider Reasons Why
  • A More Expansive, More Expensive Warfare
  • Hybrid Wars and Revolutions
  • Haiti: The Exception that Broke and Proves Some Rules
  • Chapter 2. Old Europe, New Ideas
  • St Petersburg
  • War, Paper and Enlightenments
  • A Woman Writing
  • Male Monarchs and Innovation
  • Enter the Charter Man, Enter Tom Paine
  • Part 2. Out of War, Into Revolutions
  • Chapter 3. The Force of Print
  • Philadelphia
  • Arms and the Men and the Printed Word
  • Reading and Borrowing
  • Revising the Script across Continents
  • Power and the Limits of Print
  • Chapter 4. Armies of Legislators
  • Paris
  • Hybrid Warfare Repeated and Extended
  • The Napoleon of Constitutions
  • Invading the Spanish World, Encountering God
  • Assessing the Monster and His Works
  • Chapter 5. Exception and Engine
  • London
  • War and the Limits of Exceptionalism
  • World City, City of Words and Exiles
  • Remaking South America, Imagining Britain
  • Crossings
  • Part 3. New Worlds
  • Chapter 6. Those Not Meant to Win, Those Unwilling to Lose
  • Pit cairn
  • Why Were Women Left Out?
  • Settler Warfare
  • Tahiti and Writing Back
  • Hawaii and Different Modernities
  • Chapter 7. The Light, the Dark and the Long 1860s
  • Tunisia
  • War Without Boundaries
  • Out of an American Civil War
  • Into Africa, with Hope
  • Losses and Legacies
  • Chapter 8. Break Out
  • Tokyo
  • The Violence of Change
  • The Emperors' New Constitutions
  • Japan and an Altered World
  • Lessons
  • Epilogue
  • Notes
  • Acknowledgements
  • List of Illustrations
  • Index
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Constitutions were not just records of political change and consolidation but historical objects and agents in their own right, according to this probing study. Princeton historian Colley (The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh) surveys dozens of constitutions from the 18th through the 20th centuries, including the 1755 constitution written by Corsican independence leader Pasquale Paoli, the 1889 Japanese constitution, and the 1838 constitution of Pitcairn Island (settled in 1790 by nine HMS Bounty mutineers and their Tahitian companions), one of the first charters to grant women the vote. Colley attributes the spread of constitutions to the rising scale and cost of trans-oceanic warfare, which led to crises that required governments to concede rights and political participation to their subjects. Print culture then spread the "new constitutional technology" around the world to inspire reformers--the 1790s, the author notes, saw a craze for amateur constitution-writing--and serve as sacred texts dissidents could rally around in their battles against oppressive states. Copiously researched and elegantly written, Colley's treatise goes beyond the usual Anglo-American focus of constitutional history to show the global impact of the constitutionalist movement. The result is a fresh and illuminating take on these still-living documents. Photos. Agent: Michael Carlisle, InkWell Management. (Mar.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Wolfson Prize winner Colley's chronicle retells modern history from the perspective of the constitutions drafted over the last three centuries by rulers from Catherine the Great to Tunisian soldier-constitutionalist Khayr al-Din, also embracing the first constitution to enfranchise women, for Pitcairn Island in 1838.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A sprawling global history, beginning in the 1750s, showing the incalculable impact of the drafting of written constitutions. In this wildly ambitious, prodigiously researched work, Princeton history professor Colley, a winner of the Wolfson History Prize, traces how the proliferation of written constitutions coalesced with the rise of hybrid warfare--land and sea--thus protecting the rights of those who were soldiering as well as those affected by violent invasions. Aside from the Magna Carta, signed in 1215, written documents delineating the rights and duties of "citizens" were rare until the Enlightenment, when literacy increased across Europe and philosophers such as Montesquieu popularized ideas of political liberty and separation of powers. Even among monarchs like Russia's Catherine the Great--who wrote and published the extensive Nakaz, or Grand Instruction, in 1767, modernizing the codes and laws of Russia--the era spawned countless paper documents that addressed complex matters of law, politics, and even literature and philosophy. Though occasionally unfocused, the narrative ranges widely and fascinatingly across continents and prominent historical figures, from Pasquale Paoli in Corsica to Simón Bolívar in South America to George Washington in the nascent U.S. In Europe, the constitution-writing frenzy hit its apex during the Napoleonic era. Especially groundbreaking is Colley's study of the written documents of non-European nations--e.g., Haiti--and in far-flung locales like the South Pacific island of Pitcairn (thanks to a Scottish captain, the islanders adopted a true democracy in 1838, enfranchising both men and women). The author's subchapter entitled "Why Were Women Left Out?" proves immensely elucidating. As Colley shows, many constitutions, such as the state of New Jersey's, originally recognized the participation of women before excluding them. Because many of these documents were "deployed to offer recompense for adequate supplies of manpower, they tended to lay stress on what was viewed as a uniquely masculine contribution to the state, namely, armed service." A sweeping, unique, truly world-spanning political and military history. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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