Will’s August Reading Roundup

The American Revolution, the Cold War, and the British Empire

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[AUDIO] Will’s August Reading Roundup

1. Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India by Lawrence James

I've generally found Lawrence James's work lacking, but Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India is actually reasonably good. In it, he charts the course of British rule in India, first through John Company and later through direct rule by the British government. He explains how that rule came about and how it connected to imperial strategy regarding control of naval lanes and commercial opportunities, why the British East India Company went from being primarily focused on trade to mainly focused on ruling and taxing India's inhabitants, the costs and benefits of British rule for the natives, and the great men of history who pushed the project along. The most interesting parts are his discussions of certain figures like Lord Clive and the Wellesley brothers, along with the wars they fought to bring more territory under East India Company rule and how those wars were fought and won.

James also covers how the East India Company functioned in trade and war, the role it played in British politics and imperial might, the views of the natives toward it, and British opinion on the company. The general Liberal/Whig-Tory split that existed for much of the imperial period is, I think, covered much better and with less tiresome moralism in this book than in his The Rise and Fall of the British Empire. That is actually true of this one generally: he moralizes a bit, but on the whole it is generally a factual history rather than a tiresome screed about Dominion being mean, unlike his books on Africa.

Unfortunately, the last section of the book, which covers decolonization, is quite subpar. It is simply boring, being overly detailed and drawn out while also being somewhat uncritical of the Indian nationalists and their flaws. The one thing he does do a good job of articulating in this section is that the British lost the will to rule in the 20th century, and the Raj was lost because of that rather than because it necessarily had to be given up. He also covers the importance of the Raj to the prestige and wealth of the empire well throughout the book, and does a tolerable job of connecting the loss of India to the loss of the empire generally. What makes it lacking is his generally uncritical recitation of the claims of Indian nationalists, ignoring the benefits of British rule and sins of the nationalists as he does so.

Overall, this is probably the second best of James's works. It's not as good as his superb military biography of Lord Wellington, but is leaps and bounds better than all his other books about the empire. Personally, I'm glad to be done with reading his books, as they were on the whole tiresome and disappointing, if also full of valuable information.

2. Origins of the American Revolution by John C. Miller

Origins of the American Revolution is a really fantastic book about the American Revolution, why it happened as it did, and the important role the gentry played in it. In it, Miller explains the Whig and Tory ideologies in America and Britain alike, along with the economic conditions of the day, to explain the irreconcilable tension points between Americans in the various colonies and the British. He uses that to show why successive British governments were so intent on taxing the colonies and why they were unwilling to compromise past a certain point, along with why the colonists found such compromises unacceptable and from what sources they gained that understanding of politics.

In addition to explaining the economic and ideological factors that pushed each side to war, he explains how dissatisfaction turned to mob violence against the British, and what lessons from contemporary Britain and its politics the Patriots learned as they went about gradually pushing themselves away from the British before their hard break with the empire. Miller uses that to explain the important role the American gentry played in legitimating the revolution in the eyes of respectable folks, and why the Southern gentry was so much more open to the Revolution than the Yankee “gentry” (such as there was, with merchants and lawyers being the general “gentlemen” of note in the North).

Overall, Miller does a wonderful job of describing the characters involved thoroughly, keeping the narrative going along well, presenting both sides fairly, and tracing the origins of the various arguments made by each side to show why they stuck to those arguments even as crisis came. This is a terrific book that is well worth your taking the time to read.

3. Coming Apart by Charles Murray

In my view, it is near-impossible to understand why America is the way it is at present without reading Coming Apart by Charles Murray. In it, he shows the failures of America’s white new upper class and underclass alike, explaining how both got to be as rotten as they are

Particularly, Murray handles the upper class’s near-total lack of any sense of duty beyond the personal and its similarly total lack of empathy for those whites not of its ranks quite well, and then also shows why the white underclass is damned by its vices to a state of perpetual dysfunction that is a new thing for America compared even to the middle-late 20th century. That is interesting and important, for it shows that our dysfunction-related problems are 1) far from being exclusively racial ones, 2) of overwhelming scale amongst the new underclass (such as bastardy and welfare reliance), and 3) essentially predicaments rather than problems unless we can get the new upper class to do its duty and try to stop the proles from being self-destructive. Murray takes a kinder and less paternalistic tone, generally, but that is essentially the case he makes.

None of that should be particularly surprising. The lords of Britain tried to keep liquor like gin off their estates for this reason: the lower class couldn’t handle it and would be self-destructive if given access to it. That problem is now a million times worse with everything from narcotics to tolerance of criminality to welfare-subsidized bastardy. Duty, leadership, and paternalism must make a return if those problems are to be stamped out. That’s a tall order, of course. But it is nevertheless the case and ought be remembered.

4. Gray Cavalier: The Life and Wars of General William H. F. Rooney Lee by Mary Daughtry

Gray Cavalier is a very enjoyable book about the life and career of Robert E Lee's middle son, William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, known as "Rooney" to his family. In it, Daughtry covers Rooney's being a somewhat difficult child to raise given his independent nature, his time at Harvard, his time in the US military and Confederate cavalry, and his post-war career as a farmer and politician.

Overall, parts of the tale of Rooney’s life probably could have been trimmed down in some places and elaborated upon in others, but it is a generally good and well-paced book that does a magnificent job of capturing his character and accomplishments without being overly long, which is just what a good biography should be.

One small criticism I had, however, is that this biography doesn't really get into Rooney's status in the Lee family as the only child of Robert E Lee who really moved out from his father's shadow and stood apart. His sisters never married, nor did his elder brother Custis, who generally just followed in his father's footsteps but as a less exceptional, if still honorable and talented, man. His younger brother, RE Lee Jr, did marry, but sired no sons and was generally less exceptional as a man--though also brave and successful. Rooney was the real success story of the Lee brood, and while the book covers his successes, I think it fails to properly put them in the context of his siblings largely failing to do so.

In any case, it's altogether a delightful read, and is quite interesting. Rooney is often forgotten because of the exploits of his cousin Fitz--who had a similar name and ranked higher in the same cavalry--and of course because of RE Lee's fame. But Rooney was an exceptional man, and quite an interesting one in his own right, and ought be remembered.

5. Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia by Woody Holton

Forced Founders is a great and fascinating book in two respects: 1) It promotes some relatively unique ideas about what causes compelled the Virginians to revolt, and 2) It shows why the Virginia gentry acted as it did.

The first part is covered throughout the work in an interesting discussion of how the Navigation Acts were seen as an immense tax and imposition because, unlike in New England, they could not be easily avoided with smuggling. While the Virginia gentry was tolerant of them on the whole until the late 1760s, they were seen as a massive tax, and so made further British attempts at taxation all the more galling. This was a point the British didn’t understand, but it was essentially a line in the sand with the Virginians. Similarly, Holton shows how the 1763 proclamation related to Western lands was a major betrayal of and hardship for the gentry specifically, as it was speculating in those lands, but not for the yeomen, who just squatted on them regardless. He notes that this was a major issue that radicalized the gentry, even if it wasn’t a proximate cause to war. And he shows how the gentry feared a slave revolt, particularly in the Tidewater counties, and Dunmore’s behavior as tensions rose made those fears all the stronger, helping push them towards war.

Related to all of that, Holton shows how the gentry’s response to the political situation that grew out of the 1760s was rooted in concern over all three of those matters, and also stimulated by fears that the ~80% of whites who were yeoman farmers were shaking off the gentry influence while the gentry fell deeper into debt that made its magnificence harder to support and show. So, how they pushed revolution reflected that: the non-importation and non-exportation efforts in the 1760s failed, but were an early attempt at this, and the same attempt in 1774 was hugely beneficial because it actually succeeded and drove up the price of tobacco while preventing imports (which fell from hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling to ~2000), meaning that when they did sell in 1775, the total debt to the English was reduced from 6 million pounds sterling to perhaps only 2 million pounds. That was hugely beneficial to them, in particular.

Then, as the revolution heated up in 1775, the gentry tried securing their continued leadership of the state through the organization of minuteman companies rather than militia, as officers could be appointed rather than elected. This failed, and it was a point of contention between the gentry and the commoners. The gentry salvaged the situation by doing the popular thing and voting for independence (something Holton argues the commons more than the gentry was demanding), leading to the revolution as we know it.

Overall, this is a provocative and well-done book. It’s also reasonably short, and is very easy to read.

6. General Fitzhugh Lee: A Biography by Nichols

"From plume to spur a cavalier, Who nobly wore a noble name.” Such is how Fitzhugh Lee--bold Indian fighter, dashing "Laughing Cavalier" of a Confederate general under JEB Stuart, Governor of Virginia, Brigadier General in the US Army, and Consul General to Cuba--is best remembered. A man who was the last of the Lees, a public servant committed to duty and a genius in the saddle like his Norman ancestors and close relatives--men like Light Horse Harry and Rooney Lee.

In General Fitzhugh Lee: A Biography, Nichols wonderfully tells the story of his life, focusing in particular on his post-war political career. This is a good companion book to Longacre's biography of Lee, which focuses far more heavily on his military career, something that Nichols only spends about a third of the book on. I found this one better written and generally more interesting than Longacre's, though combined the two are quite good.

If you're interested in the Lees of Virginia, this one is a must-read.

7. Fitz Lee: A Military Biography by Edward Longacre

How fitting that the last of the Lees, that Anglo-Norman clan that did so much for America, would be a great cavalier and respected governor named “Fitz”, an old Norman prefix! Longacre’s Fitz Lee is a tolerable biography of him. It covers his military service quite well, as could be expected from the title, painstakingly tracing his role in the Army of Northern Virginia’s cavalry over the course of the war, his qualities as a leader, his feud with Wade Hampton III, and his skill in commanding cavalry. It’s not a particularly long book, so that section is dense but not overly long.

The problem is that the rest of his life is just glanced through. His upbringing is noted and breezed through, and then his post-war career as a successful planter even in the devastation of the post-war period, a politician and governor, a consul to Cuba, and a military leader during the Spanish-American War is all handled in a matter of pages. While not as interesting in some ways as his time in command of the cavalry, it is a major part of his life and much of what makes him so notable as a man: in true Lee tradition, he had the dignity and prudence necessary to rebuild out of the ashes of a very bad situation, and do what others lacked the combined quality for. It is, in fact, thanks in large part to him that Virginia rebuilt as well as it did and was in such a relatively good condition in the first half of the 20th century.

But all of that is merely mentioned and moved on from, which makes this somewhat lacking as a biography. Since Longacre wanted to focus so heavily on the military aspects of his career and life, it would have been better to stick purely to that rather than having a couple of throwaway chapters about the rest of his life as well. Overall this is an enjoyable book to read because the prose is superb, the action is near-constant, and the attention to detail is stunning (though not overdone), but it is ultimately unsatisfying because of how poorly Longacre handles the non-Civil War aspects of Fitz Lee’s life, and his place within the Lee dynasty.

8. Planters and Pioneers by Parke Rouse

Planters and Pioneers is a very interesting book by Parke Rouse, one that is a good bit better than his Virginia: The English Heritage in America. In this book, Rouse concisely describes the various aspects of life in colonial Virginia, with his focus centered on the lives of the planters, from their economic situation to their preferred leisure activities. He discusses plantation life, carving civilization out of the wilderness, fighting the Indians, whist, horse racing, horse breeding, and much more

It is a good book, particularly if you want to learn a bit about the culture of the Virginia gentry without diving into the much longer and more tedious books out there on it, such as Mary Newton Stanard's Colonial Virginia, Its People and Customs.

All in all, I probably didn't need to read this one because I've done much of the other reading, but it was an interesting and enjoyable read. Rouse is a great writer, and his use of a great many pictures that I had not seen before helps bring the subject of the work to life.

9. Fairfax County, Virginia: A History by Nan Netherton

Fairfax County, Virginia: A History is a book that starts slow, is extremely good for the middle 600 pages, and then is terrible again for the last ~50 pages. Overall, it is a worthwhile read about the county that produced George Washington and George Mason, as its development shows the development of Virginia over the centuries.

After the initial bits about the Indians and geography are gotten out of the way, this becomes an in-depth study of the economics and socio-political system in Fairfax over the centuries, broken up by era. It discusses plantation agriculture and how it worked, the social lives of the Virginia gentry, the rise of Alexandria and how it was connected to trade on the Potomac and banking for planters and merchants, the river-based life of the planters, and much more. It then details why plantation agriculture gave way to small grain farms over the 19th century, how that harmed the famous Virginia gentry (and how inheritance patterns made the situation yet worse), how that shaped the politics of the county, and how scientific agriculture restored the prosperity of the county and gave the great planters another lease on life, if they were smart enough to take advantage of it. It then details the recovery from the Civil War and Reconstruction, how Fairfax changed dramatically as DC grew, and much more along those lines. The most interesting part of the book has to do with the late Colonial and early Republic period, as could be expected, but much of it is quite interesting, even the sections on the development of suburbia and the conflicts that arose with farmers as that happened.

The end is terrible. As this book was published by the county for the bicentennial, the town authorities used the last 50 pages to show how “great” they are. However, their achievements pale in comparison to much of what is discussed in the book, and the obvious self-promotion is annoying, so this section is ridiculous. It is also depressing, as it shows how a county that once birthed great men gradually just became suburbia inhabited by DC bureaucrats. But, as that is the story of Virginia as a whole, it’s probably worth reading, and the book does speculate some on why fewer great men were produced (the demise of plantation agriculture, essentially).

Overall, however, this book is surprisingly well done for a county-managed publication, and is quite an illuminating and interesting read. I very much enjoyed it, despite the grating bits.

10. Mansions of the Virginia Gentry by Henry Wiencek

“Of all Virginia’s treasures, its Colonial architecture is its greatest-a rich heritage of gracefulness in brick and wood, artistry in plaster embellishments, fine furnishings, and beautiful gardens. But, above all, the great houses of Virginia are distinguished by an uncommon elegance, refined by a love of order and rationality. It is an ideal adopted from classical antiquity, as so many of the historic ideals of Virginia society are-an ideal that is embodied perfectly in the six houses shown in this book.” Such is how the fantastic book Mansions of the Virginia Gentry begins, and that is what the book remains about.

It is a fantastic book covering the history of six Virginia mansion homes--Stratford Hall of the Lees, Shirley of the Carters, Wilton of the Randolphs, Kenmore of the Fieldings, Mount Vernon of Washington, and Monticello of Jefferson--and the social history of the Virginia gentry class as shown by those homes.

It is fabulously interesting, full of some of the most incredibly beautiful pictures imaginable, short and sweet, and does a great job of showing what certain elements of the houses and their trappings were meant to achieve, without getting overly detailed to the point of tedium. It’s really, really good, and well worth a read for anyone interested in the Virginia gentry or American architecture.

11. The Byrds of Virginia: An American Dynasty, 1670 to the Present by Alden Hatch

As I wrap up the research for my series on the Lee family and start to research others, I decided to read this book by Alden Hatch on the Byrds of Virginia. It mainly covers the three colonial William Byrds, Admiral Byrd of Arctic and Antarctic exploration fame, and Governor/Senator Harry Byrd of political machine fame. Some of the men in between are briefly covered, but Hatch tends to focus on those five most famous men, and ends with Harry Byrd rather than any of his descendants.

Overall, it’s a good introduction to the family, but is weakened by being full of somewhat overdone praise for a few of its subjects, particularly Senator Harry Byrd. Hatch treats him as an almost saintly figure, and his hand-waving away of various supposed flaws comes across as being a bit much. That makes it seem less reliable than would be ideal. But, still, it’s reasonably good and quite interestingly written.

Despite my criticism of the section, the end of the book on Harry Byrd is fabulous, and contains much useful information about how being a well-regarded person is useful for a political dissident of sorts, as Byrd was one of the key conservative southern Democrats who fought FDR and won on at least some issues. Had he been a choleric and surly fellow, that probably wouldn’t have been the case, and America would have been even more destroyed by FDR. The best section of the book is on William Byrd II of Westover; Hatch does a better job of balancing criticism of his vices and praise of his virtues and accomplishments.

Unfortunately, the worst section of the book is the one on Admiral Byrd, a great pioneer of flight and explorer of the Arctic and Antarctic. I had hoped that section would be the most interesting, but sadly it is mainly just boring and a bit tedious. All in all, this is a good book, though not a must-read. I suspect the individual biographies I have ordered will be significantly better.

12. The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997 by Piers Brendon

The Decline and Fall of the British Empire is an ok book on the British Empire. On the whole, it is better and much more interestingly written than Lawrence James's very similar The Rise and Fall of the British Empire, but Brendon leans even more heavily toward very tiresome criticism of the various imperial authorities and their lack of respect for "human rights" at times, banging the drum of slavery's evils and so on at great length, at random sections strewn about the book.

Particularly, what makes that aspect of this book infuriating is the way in which settler “atrocities” are always played up, and the author meanwhile ignores not only the horrors the natives committed against the settlers but the depredations they inflicted on each other. So the Rhodesians are damned for defending themselves in the Matabele Wars and the Bush War, and left out pretty much entirely is that the Matabele were a horrible people known for being cruel beyond belief to the Shona, or that the Shona had been freed from slavery by the Rhodesians, and then rose up and stabbed the Rhodesians in the back as they fought the Matabele. The same sort of thing plays out again and again: whites are always in the wrong, and the crimes of the non-whites don’t matter for whatever “noble savage” mythology reasons.

That is infuriating, and totally nonsensical. If the author did care about the lives of some African tribe, he’d compare the conditions in which they lived when ruled by witch doctors and cannibal kings to the conditions in which they lived when ruled by the British. The British were indubitably better in every way, and that ought to inform the history. Instead, native atrocities against settlers are treated as justified, white reprisals damned, and native atrocities against each other ignored or downplayed. That poisons the history, or at least the sections afflicted by it.

The rest of it is better. When he leaves aside moralizing and focuses instead on telling the history of the imperial project, he is quite a good writer and tells the story very well, balancing telling detail and continuing the narrative fabulously. His anecdotes are also well chosen and add significantly to the narrative, rather than detracting from it, which I have found to be somewhat rare.

Ultimately, this work could have been great, but was instead almost ruined by the left-leaning nature of its author and his tendency to digress to push tiresome moralizing on the reader. That doesn't quite ruin it, but it does make it a significantly worse book than it could and should have been.

13. High Minds: The Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain by Simon Heffer

I found myself somewhat disappointed by Heffer’s High Minds, not because it is poorly written, incorrect, or simply bad, but because the picture painted of the Victorians--one the author intended to be sympathetic--made me like them a great deal less.

The problem is that many were simply a tiresome lot. The great adventurers were not. James Brooke and Cecil Rhodes, with countless others mixed in with them, were incredible men of great spirit. Similarly, the landed elite of the Victorian era, as a whole, at least, was generally interesting and much like its recent ancestors in its prioritization of duty, refinement, adventure, service, and so on.

But those were the minority of Victorians, and the Victorian era was much more characterized (as Heffer shows well) by an unpleasant mix of moral crusaders, newly prosperous middle-class types across the income spectrum, and myopic plutocrats. Tales of mill owners feuding with moralistic Unitarians can make for interesting enough reading, I suppose, but hardly paint a picture of a particularly pleasant or praiseworthy society. The same is true of much of the rest of it, from the self-indulgent kvetching of overly introspective Dissenters and atheists to the overly earnest entreaties of moralistic reformer politicians and telescopic philanthropists. It all just smacks of the worst qualities of the middle class, religion-obsessed, and industrial plutocrats being rolled into one and feuding over insanity or minutiae while missing the larger point.

In that, the Victorian Era contrasted quite strongly with the Georgian/Regency period. I think this is best exemplified by religion. There was less atheism in that earlier era and far less tolerance of actual dissent or non-conformity, whether Judaism or remnants of Puritanism, but religion was also something that burned far less fiercely. People were simply Anglicans, went to the Established Church (which defended rather than attacked social hierarchies of the sort that defined the day), and accepted that sin existed and we ought focus on giving glory to God and reveling in His Creation rather than being dour souls tut-tutting our neighbors.

Samuel S. Hill, Jr., describing this sort of Anglicanism, notes that it was “the language of stability and gradualism, of the affirmation of the world pretty much as it is.” Such, I think, is a much healthier attitude and world. It was the one embraced by the rich and poor of the Georgian day and in Old Virginia, and helped steer the intelligent away from moralistic neuroticism and all the rotten societal fruits that come from that, and towards building and maintaining a beautiful, ordered, and traditional society. That makes sense, as it was, after all, “the religion of many conservative members of the gentry: pragmatic Protestantism, emphasizing social conformity over religious piety,” as Woolley notes in Savage Kingdom.

14. Fifty-Year War: Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War by Norman Friedman

If you are interested in learning about the Cold War, how it was fought, what the American strategy during it was, and how economics, technology, and warfare interacted with politics, then Fifty-Year War is an unbeatable book. In it, Friedman shows how American Cold War policy was a schizophrenic mix of occasionally desiring to actually defeat communism and a constant effort to destroy colonialism, and how that led to absurd situations, such as us desperately building up armored forces along the Rhine while also alienating France by siding with the Algerian terrorists against it, despite Algeria being recognized as French territory under the agreements that led to NATO.

Further, he does a great job of showing how technological advances from nukes to smart bombs changed the calculus of war over the Cold War period, what real victories and defeats America suffered during the War, why we tended to conflict with the Europeans over both colonial and anti-Soviet policy, and how different key players viewed the “dirty wars” along the fringes of the Second and Third Worlds with the “main war” being prepared for in Europe. Additionally, he shows how America’s domestic view of anti-communism shifted over time, going from fervently anti-communist to somewhat apathetic.

Of particular interest to me was his discussion of how selling the Soviets grain depleted their hard currency stock and helped lead to eventual victory in the war. I hadn’t heard that before, and found it interesting. My only complaints are that he is far too kind to the FDR and Carter administrations, in terms of downplaying the communist connections of the former and hyping up the Cold Warrior spirit of the latter. But that is an issue of degree; he is generally on the right track in both sections (being hostile to both and showing how they aided the Soviets).

This is one that you really ought to read.

15. Stratford Hall: The Great House of the Lees by Ethel Armes

Stratford Hall: The Great House of the Lees is almost a very good book.

On one hand, it is a terrific history of the Lee family members connected to Stratford Hall, and is a good bit better than the historical novel Tidewater Dynasty in that respect, while having much in it that Nagel and Hendricks do not include in their The Lees of Virginia books. The section on Light Horse Harry is quite good and is a more positive recital of what he accomplished and did than other books, and the section on Philip Ludwell is the only one I have read that I thought was generally fair to him.

But it’s also odd in that it then jumps from that to a lengthy history of the house and its being restored for the last hundred pages or so, which is understandable given that the group that restored the house funded it...but is also very boring, doesn’t really add much, and is just generally uninteresting in most respects. A condensed, 20-page section explaining much the same would have been far better, and accomplished much the same thing.

Overall, this is one I would recommend reading, but you can probably skip the end and not miss anything.

16. The Great Partnership: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and the Fate of the Confederacy by Christian B Keller

I really wanted to like The Great Partnership, but the problem is that it’s poorly executed, on the whole, in a grating way.

What is good about it is that Keller does a reasonably good job of showing how Lee and Jackson worked together during the Civil War, particularly during the post-Peninsular Campaign through Chancellorsville period that is most famous and was the high-water mark of the Confederacy. Second Manassas, Sharpsburg, and Chancellorsville are covered in depth. Those chapters are generally “fine” to good.

What is bad about it is that Keller attempts to include much else that generally distracts from the strongest and most interesting writing, which is the partnership between the two great generals. Instead, Keller includes lengthy asides on grand strategy, ways and means as related to strategy, leadership lessons from Lee, and so on. It feels very much like a self-published book written by an enthusiast who needed a good editor, though I don’t think it was.

You might enjoy it, but it’s not really worth reading. Lee’s Lieutenants by Douglas Southall Freeman is what you ought read if this general subject interests you.

17. From Empire to Europe: The Decline and Revival of British Industry Since the Second World War by Geoffrey Owen

Interested as I am in industrial policy and re-industrialization, I decided to turn to Geoffrey Owen’s From Empire to Europe, a book that appeared to be a fascinating study in how British companies went from Industrial Revolution-era outsized success to mid-20th century scleroticism, and how the industries that recovered managed to do so largely by finding ways to compete with and in the European market.

At first glance, that’s quite interesting. In reality, it’s an exceedingly dry and essentially academic work that is a slog to read. I fell asleep about a dozen times while trying to get through it. That doesn’t make it a bad book—it is meticulously researched and generally packed with facts that help prove Owen’s point. But it is a slog.

Overall, the main lesson I took from this one is that the British Liberal elite was particularly dimwitted, and the free trade policies in which it obstinately engaged over the second half of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th were exceedingly deleterious to Britain in that they 1) made the empire essentially valueless by opening its markets to foreign competition, and 2) were devastating to national security in that they helped subsidize Germany’s industrial rise. Merely maintaining imperial preference would have done a great deal to blunt those hugely deleterious effects, but Churchill types refused to countenance such pro-domestic-industry tariff policies and so British industry was impoverished to the point of being unable to compete by its German and American competitors, which had much larger and better-protected domestic markets.

There were other issues with British industry as well, namely cartelization, but one massive problem was how deleterious trade policy was for so long, as it put British industry in a position where it lacked the resources to innovate or modernize. Given the present situation regarding China, that seems very relevant.

This is probably a book worth reading if you are interested in re-industrialization, but it is a slog.

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