Written in 2013, Roger Knight’s Britain Against Napoleon: The Organization of Victory, 1793-1815, arrives next in the list. This work deals heavily with the strategy that Britain used to organize a victory in Europe. “This story of the war effort against France began in the 1780’s In Britain Against Napoleon, Roger Knight looks beyond the familiar exploits of the army alongside the navy and to the politicians and civil servants. He further examines how they made it possible to continue the war at all due to financial issues. He shows that the whole British population had to play its part in the war, and that the intelligence officers, military, and even the financiers of the City of London, were particularly instrumental in the war against …show more content…
Innovations in manufacturing also helped state-controlled defense industries with more efficient methods and also through cost cutting of materials. Because of Britain’s positioning in Europe the citizens also did not suffer the same fate as many of the French, Spanish, German, or Austrian citizens. However, they still experienced over twenty years of hard naval and military conflict, and, in consequence, significant casualties. Knight states that “since my research student days, I have been intrigued by the mechanics of eighteenth and nineteenth century British government; and here I attempt to show these at work, in relation to the armed forces and society as a whole, at a time when extraordinary pressures were placed upon them.” He also wants to present a Britain very similar to the one in recent history through evidence such as: unassailable parliamentary majority, overconfidence, unminuted meetings, bitterly violent cabinet splits-“though, as far as we known, no duels have been fought in recent times.” However, he quickly wants to make it clear in the following paragraph that these reasons are not why he wrote the