About us
The Contractor State Group (CSG) is formed by researchers from 17 universities from around the world. Its main interest is to investigate the consequences of the need to satisfy the state’s demand for military supplies during the long eighteenth century. This state demand ate up the lion’s share of its revenue and also called for a complex administration and a considerable technological development. The sheer breadth of military resources required and the variety of methods used to muster them had significant consequences, which ended up affecting the development possibilities of those societies and economies. The possibility of addressing this question from many different national viewpoints means that the study as a whole can take a global form. The ultimate aim of this group is to offer a comparative history of the implications and repercussions of the state’s military supply need.Mobilizing money and resources for war
The origins of the research group are to be found in the University of Leicester, where in 2001 Huw Bowen (then of that university) and Rafael Torres (University of Navarre) studied the possibility of initiating comparative research on warfare and economics during the early modern period. A programme was then established with the incorporation of Agustín González Enciso (University of Navarre) in a meeting held at the University of Navarre, Pamplona, in 2002. Two decisions were made at this meeting: firstly to study state warfare actions as the connecting thread of the research; and secondly to take the eighteenth century as our timeframe. We also perceived the need of establishing a precise comparative history framework, opting for an initial comparison between the English/British and Spanish cases.
With the aim of making headway in this direction, a congress was organised at Navarre University in September 2004, which included other researchers with a strong track record in this field such as Patrick O’Brien (LSE), Richard Harding (University of Westminster), Stephen Conway (University College London), Guy Rowland (University of St. Andrews), Carmen Sanz (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) and Magdalena de Pazzis (Universidad Complutense de Madrid). A review was undertaken of recent developments in the study of European warfare between 1650 and 1815, and detailed case-studies explored the different ways in which resources were mobilised for war during the long eighteenth century. This symposium generated a collection of essays edited by Huw Bowen and Agustín González (published in 2006 under the tille Mobilising Resources for War: Britain and Spain at Work During the Early Modern Period) which examined the methods used by Britain and Spain to raise money and men during wars of the early modern period.
At the Navarre congress the participants recognised that there were plenty of further avenues of enquiry for the group to explore, and they acknowledged the importance of extending comparisons across and even beyond Europe. It was therefore decided to widen the group of researchers even further and, above all, to try to broaden also the comparative framework by bringing in researchers who could provide examples from other countries. The result of all these efforts to increase the number of cases and researchers was a very well-attended session at the XIVth International Economic History Congress held in Helsinki in August 2006. This session reflected these efforts to extend our range of study, boasting participants with wide-ranging thematic and geographical interests. Finally, the papers were published as an edited collection of essays in 2007 by Rafael Torres under the title War, State and Development. Fiscal-Military States in the Eighteenth Century.
With the aim of making headway in this direction, a congress was organised at Navarre University in September 2004, which included other researchers with a strong track record in this field such as Patrick O’Brien (LSE), Richard Harding (University of Westminster), Stephen Conway (University College London), Guy Rowland (University of St. Andrews), Carmen Sanz (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) and Magdalena de Pazzis (Universidad Complutense de Madrid). A review was undertaken of recent developments in the study of European warfare between 1650 and 1815, and detailed case-studies explored the different ways in which resources were mobilised for war during the long eighteenth century. This symposium generated a collection of essays edited by Huw Bowen and Agustín González (published in 2006 under the tille Mobilising Resources for War: Britain and Spain at Work During the Early Modern Period) which examined the methods used by Britain and Spain to raise money and men during wars of the early modern period.
At the Navarre congress the participants recognised that there were plenty of further avenues of enquiry for the group to explore, and they acknowledged the importance of extending comparisons across and even beyond Europe. It was therefore decided to widen the group of researchers even further and, above all, to try to broaden also the comparative framework by bringing in researchers who could provide examples from other countries. The result of all these efforts to increase the number of cases and researchers was a very well-attended session at the XIVth International Economic History Congress held in Helsinki in August 2006. This session reflected these efforts to extend our range of study, boasting participants with wide-ranging thematic and geographical interests. Finally, the papers were published as an edited collection of essays in 2007 by Rafael Torres under the title War, State and Development. Fiscal-Military States in the Eighteenth Century.
The Spending of the States. Military expenditure.
It was now evident that a long-term research project was evolving, and with much work having been done on how states raised resources the next logical step was to examine how money was spent. The group’s harmonious working relationship and shared objectives prompted some of the participants at the Helsinki meeting to join the group: Javier Cuenca-Esteban (University of Waterloo, Canada), Farley Grubb (University of Delaware, USA), Cristina Moreira (University of Minho, Portugal), Helen J. Paul (University of Southampton, UK), Sergio Solbes (Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canarias, Spain), Roger Knight (University of Greenwich, UK), Toshiaki Tamaki (Kyoto Sangyo University, Japan), Agustin Guimerá (CSIC, Madrid, Spain), Wolfgang Lenk (University of Campinas, Brazil), Pepijn Brandon (University of Amsterdam, Holland). With these new members on board the group then concentrated on analysing the forms and consequences of military expenditure. For that purpose a meeting was held in Las Palmas, organized by Sergio Solbes, in September 2008. This served as a fruitful pre-conference meeting which prepared the ground for a session at the XVth International Economic History Congress in 2009.When the Congress took place in Utrecht in August 2009 the group’s session was entitled ‘The spending of states. Military expenditure during the long eighteenth century: patterns, organisation, and consequences, 1650-1815’. Again, this session was highly successful, with fifteen papers presented, and the edited proceedings will be published in due course.
Having now become very firmly established as a truly international, indeed global, collaborative research enterprise, the group is now looking forward to developing new projects, activities, and lines of enquiry. A plan of action was agreed at a meeting held at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London in November 2009, and this will be implemented in the coming years with a continued focus on how ‘Contractor States’ responded to the challenges posed by war at home and overseas.
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