Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The Institutional Revolution

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Contents

Preface.............................................................ix1 Introduction......................................................12 Variance Everywhere...............................................223 The Aristocrats...................................................444 A Matter of Honor.................................................805 The Royal Navy....................................................1066 Purchasing Army Commissions.......................................1467 Light houses, Private Roads, and the Treasury.....................1728 The Courts, Criminal Law, and Police..............................1919 Conclusion........................................................217Notes...............................................................229Bibliography........................................................251Index...............................................................263

Chapter One

To my Lords in the morning, where I met with Captain Cuttance, but my Lord not being up I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there was great shouts of joy. SAMUEL PEPYS, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, October 13, 1660

If it were not for his remarkable diary and detailed records, Samuel Pepys would hardly rate a footnote in history as an able naval administrator. But he did write a literary gem of a diary, in which his personal accounts and keen observations of life in seventeenth-century London enjoyably take us back in time to a world much different than our own. Today many (though perhaps not that many) read the diary for a firsthand account of the Great Plague of 1665 or the Great Fire of London in 1666, or simply to feel nostalgia for days gone by in Freshman English. But even a casual reader cannot overlook some outlandish curiosities ... like how it came to pass that a major-general was hanged, drawn, and quartered in public, much to the thrill of onlookers. Some readers are old enough to remember hanging as a capital punishment, but no one today has any experience with a public drawing and quartering.

There is more to Pepys's diary than gory dismemberment. By any account, Pepys was a successful man: chief secretary to the Admiralty, justice of the peace, member of Parliament, fellow and president of the Royal Society, and brother and master of Trinity House, to name only a few posts. Some of these positions ring familiar, others less so, but a closer inspection of any single office reveals many strange things.

For example, Pepys got his start in the navy when his first cousin once removed, Sir Edward Montagu, was willing to act as his patron. A patron in Pepys's day was a person of influence who, with a word, could make or break a career. A patron was almost always necessary for any advancement in what we would now call the "public ser vice," and Sir Edward had his own—a well-known character named King Charles II. Charles granted Montagu a number of titles, offices, and honors—including the 1st Earl of Sandwich—for his loyal ser vice during the restoration of his Crown in 1660, and his positions allowed Montagu to influence the Admiralty to grant Pepys his first office, the clerk of the acts, in the navy. Pepys had no administrative experience or formal knowledge of the navy, but this hardly mattered at the time. Patronage appointments were given to people whom the patron could trust; ability was a distinctly secondary matter. What was also strange about Pepys's office, along with most others of the age, was that it became a matter of (mostly) private property once received. When Pepys became the clerk of the acts, he owned the office the way we now own our homes: he could sell, borrow against, and earn an income from it.

As a member of Trinity House, Pepys was part of an ancient monopoly organization that privately built light houses and actually charged ships for the ser vice: no payment, no light. When he was elected to Parliament, it was first on behalf of a Lord Howard, and very few of his countrymen were allowed to vote—perhaps none of them freely, given the lack of secret ballots, the influence of sheriffs, and the ownership of many boroughs by high nobility. Though a justice of the peace, he received no salary for his efforts, and he openly accepted bribes at his naval office. His day-to-day life was very commonplace for a gentleman, but he also lived in quiet fear that someone might challenge him to a duel. Thus, Pepys provides a nice example of the paradox of life between the modern and the pre-modern world. On the one hand, Pepys's life was as ordinary as a human life could be: he worried about his supper and his gold, he was proud that his home had a spare bed for visitors, he pursued his mistresses, and he gossiped about his friends and co-workers. And yet, on the other hand, his life took place within the context of a set of social rules, norms, and organizations quite alien—and often offensive—to us today. In the West, patronage and bribes now imply corruption, duels are long gone, and universal suffrage with a secret ballot is a fundamental right. Indeed, it is this contrast in institutional context between the past and present that rivets students of history to the Pepys narrative.

In general, what often attracts us to history is the exotic within the context of the ordinary. We marvel at the spectacular military leader in an otherwise common battle. We are drawn to understand polygamy and arranged marriage among almost universal monogamous heterosexual marriage. Although we relate to, and sympathize with, the complaints of the eighteenth-century shipowner over excessive port taxes, we are more curious about the private "tax farmer" who paid the Crown for the right to collect the dues. And, of course, we are flabbergasted at the seventeenth-century diarist who unabashedly traded naval contracts for every form of payment from cow's tongue to sexual favors. If history did not have these exotic episodes, if the organization of life never changed, or if we could not relate to the individuals of the past, then history would make an unattractive study indeed. Fortunately, history has the common thread of humanity that makes it relevant. Doubly good is that its organizational detail changes over time and is therefore compelling and interesting.

Economics provides a useful tool for understanding the past because the human experience, over time, is connected through a common economic reality. At the most fundamental level, all people at all times have dealt with the problem of scarcity. There has never been enough, there will never be enough, and as a result people always have been driven to find better ways to increase their wealth and consumption. Scarcity has several universal implications: choices always have had to be made, trade-offs always have existed, actions always have had costs, and there always have been winners and losers. Modern readers recognize the signs of scarcity in our past and understand things like sibling...