have argued for 6�00 million or more at this time. Campbell puts the onus on suchexponents to show how such a number could have been fed. While the great questionmark hangs over the extent and productivity of peasant agriculture (much the greater inextent) there will be plenty of room for argument here, as indeed there will be about someof Campbell's necessary assumptions about diet. Campbell goes on to estimate areversion to about 7�00 million acres of arable by 1375 supporting a population of 2�34million, interestingly a ®gure remarkably close to Russell's pioneer estimate of 2�23million.Within the overall picture it is clear that then, as now, there were great variationsin practices and productivity from farm to farm and from region to region. By 1300progressive methods comparable to those in the Low Countries and using mostly hiredrather than customary labour were in place on some demesnes in east Norfolk, east Kent,and parts of the east Midlands and south-east. We are reminded that lords were mainlyemployers and not coercers. Elsewhere, especially in the west and north, demesnes (onthe evidence of the relatively small sample considered) clung to traditional ways.Improvement was an uneven process over time and space and depended upon amultitudeof environmental, social and economic factors. While the framework of this bookconsciously avoids a pre- and post-Black Death divide, changes over this critical periodare addressed in the last chapter. As an overview of medieval agriculture and of theproblems faced by farmers it could hardly be bettered. In several years' time it might befor, as Campbell modestly states, `̀ I offer what I have done, uneven though it is, in thehope that others will improve upon and extend it: . . . '' (p. xix). Others taking up thischallenge will have to do a lot more work before they can.

It is ®tting that this very important book should be published in the Cambridge Studiesin Historical Geography series for it had its genesis in Cambridge when Campbell was agraduate student doing his doctoral work on Norfolk. Trained as a geographer (but nowholding a Chair of medieval economic history) he has brought to his material both arange of statistical techniques (with much emphasis on cluster analysis) and animpressive array of distribution maps, most of which have been well reproduced bythe Press. Alan Baker has every reason to be pleased and not just as an editor of the series.One of his research students has, 30 or so years later, produced a ®rst-rate book and, asCampbell relates in his Preface, it was at one of the Cambridge Occasional Discussions inHistorical Geography in 1972 (held, no doubt, in Alan's room) that, in discussion after apaper which he had presented, he was prompted by Jack Langton to switch his attentionfrom court rolls to account rolls. If ever a seed fell on fruitful soil this was it.

Robin E. GlasscockUniversity of Cambridge

doi:10.1006/jhge.2002.0429, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on

Michael J. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England c. 1550ÿ1700(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. ix�448. £16.95 paperback)

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There is no shortage of books focused on the processes of state formation in early modernEngland and it might be thought that there is little room for yet another. Thoughclaiming to offer some new answers, Braddick acknowledges that he is addressing well-established questions. Previous work by authors like Hechter, Mann, Grif®ths, Fox andHindle, and Loades have certainly analysed issues such as the relationship between thecentre and the localities, the problem of multiple kingdoms, and the exercise of stateauthority in distant locations. Indeed, the bureaucratisation of governance and thecrystallisation of the state are themes that form awell-worn path, trodden by a number ofhistorians since Elton explored these issues in the 1950s. This latest contribution to thesubject in fact adds very little entirely new empirical information. Its strength lies instead

298 REVIEWS

in the broad synthesis of previous work that is offered, the clarity with which establishedquestions are re-addressed, and the brief extension of the analysis to the forms ofgovernance applied in England's early colonies in North America and elsewhere. Theauthor draws a distinction between state building and state formation. He argues thatthe latter, not the former, best characterises England's experience during the `̀ longseventeenth century''. Four ``crysallisations'' of power (pp. 7, 428 & 431) are de®ned:patriarchal, ®scal-military, confessional and dynastic. In fact, like previous writers on thesubject, Braddick explores the nature of the relationship between the crown andprovincial �elites, the invention and development of state institutions created inter alia toraise money and levy soldiers, the promotion of the reformed religion, and the extensionof English state power into Wales, Scotland and Ireland, and overseas. He also examinesevidence of the effectiveness of state power and pinpoints periods when signi®cantadvances were secured. Important innovations occurred in the period from the 1640s tothe 1690s, but signi®cant change had taken place earlierÐin the 1590s and the 1620s.While Braddick points to a consistency in the way that political power was embodied inthe villages and wards of the early modern English speaking world he argues that, as awhole, the process was undirected. People responded to the problems and opportunitiesthat they perceived around them by designing and implementing political innovationsand then employing legitimating ideas current in society at large to justify their actions. Itwas not therefore a teleological process; instead there were `̀ actions without designs,patterns without blueprints'' (p. 427). And yet broad continuities may be discerned.Solutions to new problems were often sought by drawing on longstanding models. Thuswhen Lord Baltimore was granted powers to govern Maryland in 1632, his charter wasexpressly modelled on that of the fourteenth-century Durham palatinate. Baltimore wasgiven `̀ Durham-style'' rights to grant titles to land, incorporate towns, create ports andraise revenues.

A strong case is made in the book that domestic order was maintained by a patriarchalsystem intimately woven into the hierarchy and web of patronage that led directly to thecentre of the state. And yet there are striking glimpses of its ineffectiveness. As late as the1670s only a third of English parishes had imposed poor rates in line with statutoryprovision. Elsewhere, tantalising instances of a lack of parochial compliance arementioned. Even in the post-Restoration era, it seems that there were considerablevariations in the activities of the county militia. Though the author declares that his`̀ central purpose is to describe how the institutions of the state were used, with whateffect and by whom'' (p. 6), hints of non-compliance in particular localities and of spatialvariations in the effectiveness of the state are not exhaustively examined. The authorargues that where there was a conspicuous failure to support civil governance, ``forceintervened'' (p. 421). A fuller debate about what constituted a `̀ conspicuous failure'' tocomply with the wishes of the state might perhaps prove fruitful in future. Moreover,while it is contended that `̀ all political authorities are de®ned territorially'' (p. 177), thepracticalities involved in governing particular territories, and the way that these mightimpact on the processes of state formation, might usefully have been more thoroughlyaddressed. A fascinating passage argues that the concerns of those promoting civil orderin England and Scotland came together over the border problem and the barbarouscharacter of the highlands and uplands. This perhaps offers another exciting prospect ofexploring more fully the spatial and territorial dimensions of the effectiveness of earlymodern state power.

In complaining that `̀ social, political and intellectual histories have become entirelyseparate enterprises'' (p. 431) and that this has ``impoverished our understanding ofpolitical power'' (p. 432), Braddick identi®es a key problem, namely the arti®cialcompartmentalisation of the past. By making a partial attempt to explore the ways inwhich these forces intersected and drove forward the process of state formation, thebook constitutes a very useful and worthwhile contribution. Moreover, it codi®es andre-evaluates, in a commendably accessible manner, a very large corpus of past work on

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the subject. It is written authoritatively and clearly. However, the surprisingly slenderindex and the lack of a full bibliography at the end of the volume surely detract from itsvalue as a work of reference or student text. And the absence of any maps must alsoreduce its value to readers unfamiliar with the political geography of the British Isles.

Mark BrayshayUniversity of Plymouth

doi:10.1006/jhge.2002.0430, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on

David Howell, The Rural Poor in Eighteenth Century Wales (Cardiff: University ofWales Press, 2000. Pp xvi� 317. £35.00 hardback)

In many ways this is an excellent book, providing a wide-ranging economic and socialsurvey of Wales with a particular focus on the nuances of social strati®cation and socialrelations. The prologue deals with patterns of farming (showing that outside of the mostadvanced lowland areas Welsh agriculture remained completely backward), landscape(showing that common and waste remained important and enclosure was late andpatchy), the distribution of land (picking up on themes such as the decline of the smallfarmer and Gentry and the rise of middling and large Gentry estates), settlement andpopulation and the social hierarchy, effectively setting the research agenda for the rest ofthe book. Page 17 introduces a brilliant new phrase, referring to the poor as ``The frayedhem of society''. I wish that I had thought of it. Chapter 2 deals with tenant farmers andsmall freeholders, arguing that the economic lives of such people were fragile, so much sothat rents continued to paid partially in kind throughout the eighteenth century and thatin cultural terms they were backward looking. Chapter 3 deals with craftsmen andartisans arguing, in a very short chapter, that if anything the economic lives of this groupwere evenmore precarious than the lives of tenant farmers. Chapters 4 and 5 deal with thelabouring and `̀ dependent'' poor respectively covering aspects of the economy ofmakeshifts, housing, diet, pressure on the incomes of those who worked after 1750 inparticular, and poor relief as a plank in the economy of makeshifts. Poor relief wasapparently rare inWales prior to 1750 but after 1780 theWelsh poor law appears to haveshared many of the trends in spending, pauper numbers and composition of the pauperhost that we also see in England. The response of the vestries to the growing pauperismproblem is interesting: ``niggardliness was exacerbated by the sour and begrudgingattitude displayed to their paupers on the part of the parish authorities'' (p. 114). In thissense Wales shared characteristics of the regional poor law systems in the west and northwest of England and it would be excellent to see such links drawn out in future work.Chapter 6 deals with strained social relations in Welsh communities and sets up Chapter7, which deals with Welsh popular culture. This is a very interesting discussion,emphasising the dominance of the Welsh language in ordinary lives until well past 1800,portraying popular culture as essentially bawdy and bloody and suggesting that levels ofreligious observance were consistently low. Interestingly, Methodism made inroads intothe middling classes rather than amongst working people. Chapter 8 deals with popularand elite politics and Chapter 9, possibly the most interesting of the whole book, takes onthe thorny subject of riot and popular resistance. Howell argues that ``The ruralcommunity had its own standards and sense of right and wrong which often con¯ictedwith statutory law'', pointing to frequent food riots, wrecking, smuggling and creating asense of an ungovernable society responsible for enforcing its own discipline (p. 209).Chapter 10 deals with localised crime patterns, while Chapter 11 tries to draw togethersome of the disparate strands of the book, suggesting that by 1790 the old order was incrisis and social relations had been poisoned.