Layer 1

The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution And Further Essays on State Formation

Buy hardcover (Brill)
Published Nov 2026

Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer

Authors: Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer
Corrigan and Sayer’s pioneering analysis of English state formation from the eleventh to the late nineteenth centuries profoundly challenges conventional wisdoms, showing that state formation is cultural revolution and moral regulation is fundamental to state power. Forty years after its original publication, this classic text of historical sociology continues to shape thinking about “the state” and remains widely cited across the social sciences and humanities. This reprint contains the expanded 1991 edition of The Great Arch, plus nine further essays on capitalism and state formation in England and beyond, and a new introduction by Derek Sayer.

Biographical Note

Philip Corrigan (PhD, Durham, 1977) taught at London University Institute of Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, and the University of Exeter. Many of his writings are collected in Social Forms/Human Capacities: Essays in Authority and Difference (1990).

Derek Sayer (PhD, Durham, 1975) is Professor Emeritus at the University of Alberta. His books include The Violence of Abstraction (1986), Capitalism and Modernity (1990), and the award-winning trilogy The Coasts of Bohemia (1998), Prague, Capital of the 20th Century (2013), and Postcards from Absurdistan (2022).

Corrigan and Sayer jointly founded the Journal of Historical Sociology in 1988.

Readership

This book is for academic libraries, institutes, specialists, and students across the social sciences and humanities, especially in history, sociology, anthropology, politics and international relations, education, law, and cultural studies.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi
Introduction to the Historical Materialism Series Edition 1
Derek Sayer

part 1
The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution
Foreword 13
by G.E. Aylmer

Acknowledgements 15

Introduction 17
1 ‘A Remarkably Centralized Country’: State Formation in Medieval
England 33
2 ‘This Realm of England Is an Empire’: The Revolution of the
1530s 66
3 An Elect Nation: The Elizabethan Consolidation 80
4 Mortall God Enthroned: One Bourgeois Revolution (of Many) 99
5 From Theatre to Machine: ‘Old Corruption’ 117
6 ‘The Working Class Question’: ‘Society’ and society 150
7 Epilogue: ‘There Is, above All, an Agency’ 212
Afterthoughts 231

Bibliography 261

Additions to 1991 Edition 301

Preface to 1991 Edition 301

Postscript 302

Bibliographical Supplement 313

part 2
Organizing the Subject: Further Essays on State Formation

1 State Formation (Entry for a Dictionary) 323
Philip Corrigan

2 From ‘the Body Politic’ to ‘the National Interest’: English State
Formation in Comparative and Historical Perspective (an Argument
concerning ‘Politically Organized Subjection’) 325
Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer

3 Introduction to the Making of the Boy 393
Paul Corrigan

4 The Making of the Boy: Meditations on What Grammar School Did
with, to, and for My Body 396
Philip Corrigan

5 Untying the Knots: TheTexts of the State (from the Battle of
the Books to the Books of the Battle): Remarks for Ludwig and
Michel 417
Philip Corrigan

6 British Reaction to the Amritsar Massacre 1919–1920 440
Derek Sayer

7 A Notable Administration: English State Formation and the Rise of
Capitalism 473
Derek Sayer

8 Bread and Knowledge Politics: E.P. Thompson (1924–1993) 507
Philip Corrigan

9 Everyday Forms of State Formation: Some Dissident Remarks on
‘Hegemony’ 514
Derek Sayer

10 Undoing the Overdone State 524
Philip Corrigan

11 Great Arches Viewed from the Coasts of Bohemia: Reflections
Inspired by Tables of Kings 532
Derek Sayer

References for Part 2: Organizing the Subject 551

Index 576