Trust and Distrust

Mark Knights has published extensively on early modern Britain with a particular focus on its political culture. His first book was Politics and Opinion in Crisis, 1678-1681 (1994), and he has published two further books with OUP on later Stuart culture. He moved to the University of Warwick in 2007 and has directed its Early Modern and Eighteenth Century Centre. The research for Trust and Distrust: Corruption in Office in Britain and its Empire, 1600-1950 won two awards, the first 2014-16 an AHRC Leadership Fellowship and in 2020 a Leverhulme Fellowship.

• 1: Introduction 2: Indian Civil Servants 3: Conceptualising Office 4: Conceptualising Corruption 5: Trust, Standards of Public Office, and Corruption 6: Interest and Disinterestedness 7: Public Money, Public Accounts, and Accountability 8: Informal Accountability 9: Freedom of the Press and Anti-Corruption 10: The Politics of Anti-Corruption 11: Sale of Office 12: Gifts and Informal Profits of Office 13: Conclusion 14: Policy Implications

No historian of this long period can afford to ignore the book and it will certainly appeal to a large readership not only among historians of Britain and its empire but among political scientists more generally.