John Nye: belief

Transcript context

…Frank Fukuyama has suggested that, whether Britain or England — I’m not sure — had a more mature state early on, along with Denmark, and this is why they were not successfully invaded. They were fiscally strong, they could build a navy. They didn’t lose any of those wars in the sense of being conquered. Do you agree with his argument? Do you think that was luck? No. I don’t think it’s luck, but I think there’s a number of things to consider. To begin with, the fact that you need to cross the water to get to Britain is an advantage in their favor. In much the same way, Britain had some advantages, say, Japan had in Asia, where that the Chinese were never able to overwhelm Japan for similar reasons. Having to cross the channel — it was nontrivial, given older technologies. It was not an easy thing to conquer Britain in the same way that it wasn’t easy for Britain to hang onto Normandy, or England to hang onto Normandy. I think the geography matters. Secondly, England did have a more centralized state earlier, but that was made possible by fiscal reforms, which is another thing I discuss in my book. War, Wine, and Taxes talks about the fact that it’s ironic that in the period we think of as liberal Britain, Britain had the fastest-growing tax revenues throughout the 18th century of any country in western Europe. British tax revenues rose 450 percent from the 1700s through to the end of the 18th century, which is remarkable since everybody else was trying to raise revenues and were unsuccessful at doing so. What do you think of the argument that classical liberal ideology was somehow an essential part of the Industrial Revolution?…

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