Her first book, from 1982, was a study of Britain’s Tory Party she went on to a highly original account of nation-making in Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (1992) and then to the casualties and strains of empire in Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600–1850 (2002). In a daring revisionist move that overturns explanations of the proliferation of constitutions “ only by reference to the rise of democracy and the lure of certain (mainly Western) notions of constitutionalism,” Colley foregrounds warfare, particularly naval warfare, as the spur and points to the many military men involved in constitution-making: hence the guns and ships of the title, although the ships reappear in more peaceful guise, carrying nineteenth-century exiles and future leaders as they gather ideas across the world.Ĭolley is a professor of history at Princeton, and the broader perspective she demands of her readers also marks her own academic journey. In this bold, packed account of the growth of written constitutions from the mid-eighteenth century until the advent of World War I, a web of connections spins between continents, entangling, clashing, looping back, increasing in speed and complexity. Her dazzling global history does just that, pulling away the blinkers of national stories, widening the focus, and showing-as the current pandemic has done-how interconnected all our lives and interests are. “We need to broaden and diversify our gaze,” Linda Colley asserts in The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen. Toussaint Louverture proclaiming the Constitution of the Republic of Haiti, Jnineteenth-century lithograph
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