The central question that Colley asks in her new book is how written constitutions became such a prevalent feature of modern politics and polities. Her answer is in some respects a familiar one, but in other ways it is strikingly original. Although the United States, France, and other countries that served as fulcrums for the age of revolution certainly loom large in the first half of her book, this book is decidedly not a celebratory story of constitutions as instruments of liberation and popular sovereignty. Instead, Colley argues that constitutions were crafted in response to a new kind of “hybrid” warfare in the eighteenth century that occurred simultaneously on land and at sea (28). This development placed unprecedented pressures on states to mobilize manpower and other resources at a time when the rapid spread of print technologies and the political ideas that piggybacked on them necessitated new methods of binding subjects to states. Thus, constitutions were the products of “the gun, the ship, and the pen.”By refashioning the origin story of constitutions in this way, Colley demonstrates that they were useful to monarchies as well as republics, to authoritarian regimes as well as their democratic critics. An early example that she discusses in some detail is the Nazak, or Grand Instruction, a quasi-constitutional document that Catherine the Great of Russia drafted in the 1760s, decades before the spread of revolutions. Frederick the Great of Prussia and Gustaf III of Sweden also tried their hands at constitution making. According to Colley, however, the most prolific producer of constitutions in early nineteenth-century Europe was Napoleon, who had a habit of imposing them on territories that he conquered. These cases serve as useful counterpoints to the more familiar story of constitutions, especially in the Americas, as manifestations of revolution and republicanism. Even there, constitutionalism and authoritarianism were not necessarily at odds, as Haiti’s swift turn to monarchy attests.The second half of Colley’s book traces the spread of constitution writing to other parts of the world. It offers some surprising cases, starting with the tiny island of Pitcairn, where an English sea captain wrote a constitution for the descendants of the Bounty mutineers in 1838. Elsewhere in the Pacific, indigenous rulers like Pomare II of Tahiti and King Kamehameha II of Hawaii embraced constitutions as well. Colley’s often circuitous account of constitutionalism’s widening reach extends to California, Tunisia, Liberia, and other unexpected destinations. It also shows how constitutions were often deliberately crafted to exclude certain groups, especially women and indigenous peoples, from political participation. The penultimate chapter, titled “Break Out,” focuses on Japan’s Meiji Restoration and its 1889 constitution, arguing for their transformative influence on much of the non-Western world. By the twentieth century, “written constitutions progressively became a norm and a habit which it was hard for states anywhere to ignore and resist” (416), though Britain remains a striking anomaly, a fact that Colley acknowledges and attempts to explain.The preceding summary can hardly do justice to the richness and range of this book, nor to the clarity and originality of its argument. Moreover, Colley writes with great verve, leavening her analysis with vivid case studies and character sketches. She also makes superb use of visual images as historical evidence. Many of the sixty-seven illustrations that appear in the book are integral to her argument and discussed in some detail. Two notable examples are her commentaries on James Gillray’s withering caricature of Napoleon writing a new constitution and a disturbing Shunga print showing a Japanese soldier raping a Russian one (170,394). With her eye for the telling image and the compelling incident, Colley skillfully brings to life what could well have been a dry, monotonous story of the adoption of constitutions by countries around the globe.
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Aug 8, 2024
Dawn Sanders + 2
Open Access
