Synergies of Liberty: Defense Expenditure and Industrial Take-Off During the Second Hundred Years War

Abstract

This comparative historical analysis investigates the intersections among economic liberty and styles of defense expenditure during The Second Hundred Years War between Britain and France (c.1689 – c.1815). It will be argued that the presence of institutionalized economic liberty amid market-based open-bid contracting in defense spending and procurement in Britain during the Second Hundred Years War, and the absence of said in its’ long 18th century adversary, France, led to starkly different economic and political outcomes among the two nations. Amid historically colossal and equivalent military expenditure across the entire long 18th century, Britain spawned the Industrial Revolution while the French state collapsed under the weight of military expenditure. The case is made that the presence of economic liberty throughout British markets and British systems of defense expenditure, and the lack thereof in France, is the fulcrum upon which these two starkly alternative national outcomes turned.