Another long review of this book that gets a bit more into the UK's lack of a written constitution: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n07/neal-ascherson/scrib

Another long review of this book that gets a bit more into the UK's lack of a written constitution: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n07/neal-ascherson/scribbles-in-a-storm https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n07/neal-ascherson/scrib... (May be behind a paywall.) Contains a rebuttal to the book's central thesis that wars beget constitutions: "It’s not hard to demonstrate that war in this period, swelling monstrously in its global extent, army numbers and killing power, could shake existing states and empires to their foundations. The cost of modern conflict – the enormous human mobilisations, the new battle fleets – emptied treasuries and laid crushing burdens of taxation on populations. The relentless search for recruits brought grief and often violence to every village. Disruption led to discontent, sometimes to revolt. But there’s no simple and direct link between warfare – and the social turmoil it provokes – and constitution-writing. Colley shows, shrewdly enough, how rulers desperate for cannon-fodder devised a connection between soldiering and the new idea of citizenship. Join the army, and you will be entitled to a vote and to the protection of new-fangled constitutional rights, all set down in writing. (This condition effectively kept women out of political life.) In that sense, warfare did sponsor some constitutions. But was it more than a single powerful factor in a bundle of upheavals, class conflicts and royal or plebeian ambitions, any combination of which could move somebody with a pen to design a new order? It would have helped to be given at least one detailed example of the way the pressures of a specific war led to a constitution. Colley cites America’s 1787 constitution, which, she argues, was not intended primarily as ‘a blueprint of a liberal democratic society’ but was a ‘grimly necessary plan for a more effective and defendable union’ in the face of military threats from Britain, Spain and even Russia. Perhaps. On the other hand, Britain in 1815 emerged emaciated and simmering with unrest after three huge wars in a generation, but developed no written constitution. The best that can be said is that people start scribbling most frequently in stormy times, when the existing state of governance no longer carries conviction with subjects, rulers or both."