264 REVIEWS AND SHORT NOTICES

© 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing.

military significance and impact on political cultures of what was in some waysthe first world war. Conway’s study considerably extends this scholarship byexamining the economic, social, political and administrative dimensions of theBritish state’s involvement in a quarter-century of war from 1739 to 1763. Whileit is increasingly fashionable to focus on war as an agent of historical change,Conway is careful to not overstate the case, conceding that in many ways theimpact of the wars was ‘merely ephemeral’ or simply ‘intensified or acceleratedrather than initiated change’ (p. 141). That said, important developments occurredduring the wars. Hanoverian rule was secured and ‘the people’ increasinglybecame a voice in politics. Governing a commercial society and entering intopartnerships with private and local interests, the relatively ‘efficient and effective’structure of the British state was enhanced by the pressures of war. The navy’sprestige reached new heights while the army began to be seen in a positive light.Military manpower shortages and the defeat of Jacobitism saw the beginningof the rehabilitation of Catholics, while Protestants felt increasingly secureand willing to dispute their differences. While Conway sees a ‘unifying sense ofBritishness’ making only ‘slow and fitful progress’ (p. 193), it was a transatlanticBritishness. Partnerships between state and various local interests throughoutthe empire underpinned victory in the Seven Years War, when a ‘sense of Britishpride united the transatlantic nation’ (p. 226). The concluding chapters discussthe loss of the North American colonies, ‘the view from the grass roots’ (basedon case studies of Cork, Edinburgh and Berkshire), and provide a very usefuldiscussion of British similarities and differences with the continental states. Theclearly written and nuanced discussions in this book are based on a very impres-sive depth of archival research and synthesis of a wide range of historiography.

University of Tasmania

ANTHONY PAGE

Late Modern

Women in Business, 1700–1850.

By Nicola Phillips.

Boydell. 2006. xi + 299pp.£50.00/$85.00.

This book is a valuable addition to the growing body of literature that is cur-rently re-examining the role of women in the history of economic enterprise.Through the experiences of those who owned and ran businesses, Phillips showsthat women were not necessarily marginalized into low-status, feminine tradesduring the long eighteenth century, nor were they removed from the workforceby a developing ideology that sought increasingly to locate them within theprivate domestic sphere.

The book is divided into three sections. Part I provides a particularly usefuland comprehensive overview of the legal position of early modern women. Itargues that both single and married women were adept at defending their inter-ests within the legal system. Moreover, some were capable of exploiting thesystem to their own advantage. Consequently, legal disabilities did not necessarilyform a significant barrier to women’s success in business.

Part II provides an analysis of business practices and trading networks. Thissection is clearly the product of intensive research but is inevitably restricted bythe lack of available sources. It draws on material extracted from insurancerecords and advertisements relating to businesswomen mainly in London. These

LATE MODERN 265

© 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing.

data are contrasted with a study of trading networks within a county town asrevealed through the accounts and receipts of Judith Baker, a Durham gentle-woman. These sources offer interesting snapshots of business life but, as the authoracknowledges, drawing general conclusions from these snapshots is rather moreproblematic.

Part III uses a range of contemporary published material and advertisementsto consider how women in business were represented by others and how theypresented themselves. Phillips finds that positive representations of women inbusiness were rare but that the proliferation of hostile literature was in itselfstrong evidence of female success. Equally, when businesswomen representedthemselves in advertisements they emphasized their skills, experience and repu-tation, thus displaying a willingness and ability to compete in the business world.

Although the analysis is sometimes limited by the available sources, the threesections of the book cohere well and together they show that the factors whichare commonly held to have impeded female economic activity – legal disabilities,financial barriers, and cultural expectations which relegated women to thedomestic sphere – did not prevent some women from making a significant con-tribution to the English economy.

University of Leicester

ANNE MURPHY

A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England 1783–1846

. By Boyd Hilton.

Oxford University Press. 2006. xxv + 757pp. £30.00.This magnificent addition to ‘The New Oxford History of England’ com-

pletes its coverage of the period 1689 to 1918. It will be for others to assess theimpact of the series as a whole. However, readers of Hilton’s volume can beconfidently assured of an invigorating and impressively shrewd analysis of aperiod which has sometimes appeared to evade effective characterization. Thegeneral outline of Hilton’s analysis will be familiar to readers of his previouswork – notably,

Corn, Cash, Commerce

(1977),

The Age of Atonement

(1988), andhis revisionist interpretations of liberal Toryism and Robert Peel. However, inbringing these different facets together and enlarging upon them on a muchbroader canvas, Hilton has produced the most important synthetic account tohave appeared since Lord Briggs’s pioneering Age of Improvement (1959). Hiltonprovides a truly holistic reading of political life in the period between Pitt’s riseand Peel’s fall through mapping overlapping developments in politics, society,culture, economics, science and intellectual life. One need not subscribe to theHiltonian zeitgeist in its entirety to be impressed by the skill and scholarship hebrings to bear. Chapters outlining the narrative of events and analysing politicaldevelopments are interspersed with incisive discussions of the ‘psychology’ and‘ruling ideology’ of the regimes under review (the latter sweeping into their orbitan impressively wide range of subjects which are traditionally omitted altogetheror else awkwardly situated in synthetic accounts). Hilton is not much given tomisty-eyed hero-worship, preferring to talk about politics ‘in the time of’ asopposed to in ‘the age of’ its dominant personalities. Such traditionally celebratedlions of the age as Lord Grey get an unusually rough ride at his hands, althoughHuskisson continues to be the recipient of high praise: ‘as a statesman he wasunparalleled’. Hilton also eschews traditional descriptions of the age as oneof ‘reform’, ‘uncertainty’ and ‘unease’, favouring an adaptation of Lady Caroline