Status Updates From State Formation in Early Mo...

Reading for uni means I have no time to read anything else :/

‘There were at least two centres of civility in Britain - the lowlands of England and Scotland - and the associated programme of political and tenurial reform could be attractive to elite groups at the margins of crown dominions. The integration of the English and Scottish peripheries was not simply, or even mainly, a matter of coercion.’ (378)

Campaigns of patriarchal social order succeeded because they united local and center interest. Fiscal-military buildup faced much foot-dragging prior to the civil wars, when the conflict invested the language of necessity with greater believability. Religiously the crown’s profession of a true religion (Anglicanism) required it to pursue uniformity, but this goal proved unattainable in the localities.

Military and fiscal functions, because of their association with professionalization and specialization were particularly important in the emergence of the modern state, defined in terms of specialized, bureaucratic, differentiated institutions. The legitimation of these activities was also associated with more modern languages, those describing an impersonal state, necessity, and autonomous national interests. (285)

In the fiscal-military realm, legitimacy was acquired through the language of necessity (234)

The state embraced a patriarchal approach to social order - discipline and protection were both within the purview of the state. Yet “patriarchal légitimations did not simply empower patriarchs... central to the success of this patriarchy was the participation of those who were formally subordinate - the middling sort, and those among women and the poor anxious to pay claim to respectability.” (174)

If Braddick would stop using so much passive voice this would be a more pleasant read

Braddick emphasizes that certain state forms and legitimating ideologies were more useful for particular interests and ends. The book treats 4 such ends - social order, military buildup, “true” religion, and territorial acquisition (I.e., empire and trade).

Early Modern English state was “a network of offices exercising political power” (45). Political power was enshrined in offices (as opposed to individuals) which were territorially and functionally defined, as well as backed by the threat of legitimate force (17-18).

Braddick’s approach to SF is ad-hoc; political power, it seems, was leveraged by particular social interests at different times (and at the same time), and transformed the political structure of the state w/o a guiding blueprint