Leviathan

How Britain's ships and men created a superpower. The 300 years between the Tudor accession and the loss of the American colonies witnessed one of history's greatest transformations: the creation of 'Britain' and its emergence as the world's most formidable maritime power. This age saw the break with Rome and the establishment of English and Scottish Protestant kingdoms; the forging of a powerful state out of the chaos of the Civil War; and the winning and losing of Britain's 'first' empire in America. It was a period shaped by some of the most compelling personalities and thinkers of Western history: Henry VIII and his equally indomitable daughter Elizabeth I, the controversial philosopher Thomas Hobbes, and the all-conquering Oliver Cromwell. Britain's rise as a European superpower was driven less by trade or dreams of conquest than by a deep desire to strike a blow for 'the Protestant cause'. Religious intolerance and xenophobia were the raw material of empire. Yet though the British state would acquire the strength to subjugate new lands, enslave millions, and crush its rivals, it also practised an unparalleled commitment to ideas of freedom and the rule of law. In this wide-ranging new study, David Scott challenges traditional assumptions about how Britain achieved her global might. Patriotism and constitutional ideals competed with baser motives, or were sidelined by the impact of dynastic accident and the vagaries of war. Leviathan tells the story of the religious fanaticism, political hatred, profiteering, and hunger for power that made Britain great.