I’ve been reading NAM Rodger’s The Command of the Ocean, the second volume of his naval history of Britain, partly to see how sovereigns managed serious debt back in the day. Between 1649 and 1700 and the English Navy professionalized, lost two wars against the Dutch, and provided a great deal of material for Samuel Pepys’ diaries. All interesting, but Rodger might be most rewarding on how the institution was financed. The navy incurred huge debts, whether serving Parliament, the Lord Protector, a Stuart king, or William of Orange. Few of these leaders, moreover, were enthusiastic about paying off the balances of those who preceded them, and all of them wanted to operate the boats on the cheap.

Getting into this world requires a rethinking of the risks of government contracting, which is now are thought to be quite profitable, if bureaucratic, I think. Back then a debt to the government was almost always late in paying, privileging the richest contractors, who could afford to wait for their money, and putting many others in the direst of circumstances. Rodger is good at ferreting out the piteous pleas of bankrupt providers of sails and builders of masts who went to the hulks while owed thousands of pounds by the crown, and so on. Pepys changed some of this, and Rodger shows how he tried to turn the Navy from something a bit more buccaneering into something a bit more accountant-like, as did his counterpart Colbert, the man who built and supplied the French Navy.

In Rodger’s view, the Navy became an integral part of the state not because it defended liberty, or threatened it, but because it cost so much and required regular taxation for frequent collections and invoicing systems that look like a constant battle between amusing corruption and modern systems of accounting. Interesting, if the financing of government operations interests you.

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