Britannia 1066-1884

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. A Public Choice Model of Absolutism in Medieval England: 1066–1485

   • Charles K. Rowley, Bin Wu

   Pages 1-22

3. The Tudor Dynasty: Perfecting Absolutism in the Era of Renaissance and Reformation, 1485–1603

   • Charles K. Rowley, Bin Wu

   Pages 23-40

4. The Stuart Doom: The Hinge of Fate for Absolutist Autocracy, 1603–1688

   • Charles K. Rowley, Bin Wu

   Pages 41-68

5. The Seventeenth Century Philosophical Divide: Unity or Liberty

   • Charles K. Rowley, Bin Wu

   Pages 69-96

6. The Demise of the Divine Right of Kings, the Decline of Monarchic Power, and the Rise of Parliament, 1689–1775

   • Charles K. Rowley, Bin Wu

   Pages 97-134

7. Hugo Grotius, John Locke, Cato’s Letters, and the American Revolution

   • Charles K. Rowley, Bin Wu

   Pages 135-147

8. The Zenith of Classical Liberal Philosophy in Britannia: From the Scottish Enlightenment to John Stuart Mill

   • Charles K. Rowley, Bin Wu

   Pages 149-165

This book offers an analytic history of Britannia (first England and Wales and then Great Britain) over eight hundred years of political turmoil, intermingled with economic stagnation, followed by the engine of the industrial revolution. The book draws on economics, political science, public choice, philosophy and the law to probe in depth into the evolution of Britannia from an impoverished feudal and then post-feudal autocracy into a constitutional monarchy with limited suffrage that provided the fulcrum for industrial and commercial success, making Britannia, by 1884, the richest nation, per capita, on the planet. The book challenges head-on the Whiggist liberal notion of Macaulay and Trevelyan that the path from oppression to freedom was one of unimpeded progress. Among its novel features, the book draws upon the dictator’s handbook, as modeled by Bueno de Mesquita and Alistair Smith to evaluate the period of varying autocracy, 1066-1688. The book draws upon modern public choice theory and legal history to evaluate the fragile, corrupt constitutional monarchy that oversaw the initial phase of post-Glorious Revolution Britannia, 1689-1775. At each stage, the philosophical battle between those who sought order and unity and those who sought individual liberty is meticulously outlined. The book draws on the contributions of the Scottish Enlightenment (Hume, Ferguson and Smith) and of classical liberal philosophy (John Stuart Mill) to explain the final vault of Britannia from a weak and corrupt to a robust and admired constitutional monarchy grounded on the rule of law, over the period 1776-1884.

• American Revolution
• Britannia
• Constitutional Monarchy
• Laissez-Faire Capitalism
• Medieval England
• Public choice theory

• Department of Economics, George Mason University, Fairfax, USA

  Charles K. Rowley

• Department of Finance and Taxation, Shandong University of Finance, Jinan, Shandong, China

  Bin Wu

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