Merchants and the Military in Eighteenth-Century Britain: British Army Contracts and Domestic Supply 1739–1763 by Gordon E. Bannerman (review)

111 the British were creating a new kind of empire. The British produced stability, he maintains over and over like a mantra , though he remarks ‘‘the stability of the age could be more apparent than real.’’ This is said after discussing the Tory satirists Dryden, Pope, and Swift, who are all notoriously sour about their native land. Despite the lavish photos, paintings and sketches, the chapters are weak in the discussion of the arts, culture, architecture , and landscaping, the treatments of which are thin and clichéridden . The arts of the early eighteenth century, Mr. Langford opines, retreated into classicism. If a retreat occurred, it was a glorious performance many times surpassing the originals in ancient Greece and Rome. While mentioning Walpole’s manipulations, Mr. Langford reproduces a very coarse cartoon of the ‘‘broad bottom or coalition ministry,’’ which displays the bottoms of cronies simultaneously shitting—this is history from the bottom up. James Thornhill’s depiction of the Protestant Succession of William and Mary, which adorns the naval hospital at Greenwich, shows a grander eighteenth century. Although much of the period has been left out— music, novels, the battlefields in America and new fashions and arts and fads, like orientalism—much has been included . Arthur J. Weitzman Northeastern University GORDON E. BANNERMAN. Merchants and the Military in Eighteenth-Century Britain: British Army Contracts and Domestic Supply, 1739–1763. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007. Pp. xvi ⫹ 264. £60; $99. Probing the realities behind the old adage ‘‘an army travels on its stomach,’’ Mr. Bannerman analyzes eighteenthcentury British Army contractors’ toils and travails. His detail will appeal to military enthusiasts, though Merchants and the Military is also situated in the crosscurrents of existing political, military , economic, and social history studies . Scholars have subjected the contractors to ‘‘analytical compartmentalization .’’ Political historians placed contractors within the ‘‘Old Corruption’’ of the eighteenth-century bureaucracy, as the fat-cat beneficiaries of parliamentary patronage and lax war-time spending. Military writers likewise caged military mercantile interests within palisades of purely logistical problems, ignoring the wider socio-economic backgrounds of these pivotal individuals. Following in the wake of John Brewer’s Sinews of Power (1990), Mr. Bannerman links these disparate studies together by examining the neglected suppliers of ‘‘basic necessities such as bread, forage, fuel and horses’’ successfully to chart the activities and connections of the contractors. He stresses the reasons for government dependence on private merchants for supplying public needs and the relative absence of patronage from the employment process. He convincingly argues that contractors supplied reliable sources of supply as well as lines of credit and a variety of military contacts that government bureaucracies could not match. The intermittent nature of warfare prevented the formation of a government supply corps and also provided an ideal environment for the expansion of contracts. Low-intensity conflict and far-flung garrisons created a dependence on merchants, while the marked increase in operations made contractors 112 nonexpendable. While Mr. Bannerman argues that pragmatic economic concerns trumped political patronage in the awarding of contracts, he notes that the Jacobite rebellions altered this scenario in Scotland, where loyalty became a credential for employment. Mr. Bannerman’s analysis of procedures and patronage lays bare the technical considerations that underlay government employment. Merchants had to demonstrate possession of a sufficient credit line to underwrite expenses in the face of lagging government payments, and a contact network that would guarantee their ability to supply the troops. London merchants dominated this field. Arguing against the conventional image of contractors as war profiteers, Mr. Bannerman points out that few made fortunes. The majority of contractors were established businessmen, who pursued government employment as one of many commercial endeavors. Contractor John Willan, for example, had previous interests in supplying horses and wagons , or bread and hay, which were issued to troops. While a few were politically prominent, most simply were successful merchants. Well-researched and analytical, Merchants and the Military draws together multiple separate threads of historical inquiry to plumb a vital, neglected, area of eighteenth-century British history. William P. Tatum III Brown University SCRIBLERIANA TRANSFERRED ENGLISH VERSE 1701–1750: RECENT LISTINGS, ESPECIALLY FROM XIMENES AND C. R. JOHNSON James E. May • Antiquarian dealers Chris Johnson (C...