The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World

Linda Colley discusses the aims and methods involved in her recent book The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World (2021), and comments in retrospect on some of its arguments about the connections after 1750 between patterns of conflict, the exponential spread of written constitutions across continents, and the progress (and limits) of rights. Linda Colley is Shelby 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University and a Fellow in History at the Swedish Collegium of Advanced Study. Born in the UK, she earned her BA from Bristol University, and her MA and Ph.D. at Cambridge. She subsequently held chairs at Yale and a the ., before moving to her present position in 2003. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and holds seven Honorary Degrees. Translated into 15 languages, her books include In Defiance of Oligarchy: The Tory Party 1714-1760 (1982) Namier (1988), Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (1992), which won the Wolfson Prize, Captives: Bri