18세기 영국의 국가체제와 제국 경영

Abstract

Britain repeatedly won the wars with France during the eighteenth century. What is the reason of Britains victories over France in spite of its inferiority in population and territory? According to the modernization theory, the British government was no more than a small rotten state that could only guarantee vested interests of nobles and gentlemen. It was in the end of the eighteenth century that the state system began to experience fundamental changes. With the rise of social problems in the industrial revolution, the state was changed into more efficient system. This modernization model can not explain why small Britain could win the wars with France, the so-called second Hundred Years War during the eighteenth century. In fact Britain continued to develop its state system to a strong governmental apparatus in the process carrying out wars. τhe British government increased its financial expenditure in order to have large navy and army, and the growth of governmental expenditure was based upon national bonds and excise tax. τhe state system was above all a type of efficient organization for wars. Therefore, it sho벼d be called a fiscal-military state' in a word. What is more important, here, is the fact that the fiscal-military state could be developed on the basis of the financial revolution in the early eighteenth century. 1n this period the rule of colonies also tended to be changed from indirect domination to direct one, which would be a result of the fiscal-military state system. But it gradually became impossible for this system to be run flexibly in the early nineteenth century. H seemed that the fiscal-military state could not be operated efficiently. We can understand the public opinion for governmental reforms at that time in this perspective. Contrary to the modernization model, the movement for reforms was poiηting to a reduction of governmental activities rather than its extension. In short, the slogan of efficiency and speciality in the early nineteenth century was originated not from the result of the successive development of the eighteenth-century state, but from a reflection of the fiscal-military state.