ABSTRACT
In Federalist 41, James Madison celebrated both British and American military institutions. Both countries, unlike the great powers of Western Europe, possessed military forces that would not lead to oppression. This was only possible, he explained, because they had been similarly blessed by geographic insulation from foreign entanglements by the English Channel and the Atlantic Ocean, respectively. They were thus able to do without large, regular army forces, which would have undoubtedly introduced military despotism and eroded civil liberties. Instead, they could largely rely upon citizen-based militias and the eet.1 Madison clearly discerned a large degree of consonance between British and American attitudes about military power, and this article argues that the ‘British Atlantic world’ proves a useful organizing principle for examining political thinking on military power in the British Isles and early America.2 This article treats the period between c. 1640 and c. 1868, that is, from a little before the outbreak of the English Civil Wars to a little after the conclusion of the American Civil War. Such a large-scale study, albeit one primarily concerned with the American founding, might call to mind Lovejovian unit ideas that persisted and were transmitted, unaltered, across the Atlantic. This is not my contention. Indeed, while commonalities are emphasized, attention is also given to the transformation of ideas over time.3
