In her illuminating and wide-ranging book, Colley weaves a historical web that draws in countries from almost every continent. That, along with its successor, the Humble Petition and Advice, undergirded Britain’s government throughout Cromwell’s Lord Protectorship, until Charles II’s restoration to the throne brought an end to Britain’s experiment with republicanism – and with formal constitutions. It was ravaged by civil war in the mid-1600s, leading to the adoption of the Instrument of Government and the installation of Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector in 1653. Even Great Britain, long fabled as the country without a codified constitution, was not immune to the “warlike pressure” of this period. In The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen, Colley describes how the modern nation-state – and modern constitutionalism – emerged from the smoke of the cannon fire that engulfed the world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This claim raises an important question: What will today’s belligerent, combative politics in many countries mean for the future of liberal democracy, whose principles and values are arguably under siege like never before. LONDON – It is the crucible of war, Linda Colley argues, that forges constitutions. Jan-Werner Mueller, Democracy Rules, Allen Lane, London, 2021 Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2021. Linda Colley, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World, Liveright, 2021. Stephen Breyer, The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics, Harvard University Press, 2021.

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