UM Professor Publishes Book on British Gambling

            Dr. John Eglin, a scholar of British history and professor of history at the University of Montana, published his latest book last year.  Titled The Gambling Century: Commercial Gaming in Britain from Restoration to Regency, the book explores the history of gambling in Great Britain during the “long eighteenth century”, from the Restoration of the monarchy through the Regency era and reveals how the fledgling gambling industry in England impacted all of British society, not just those unlucky people who lost it all.

            Eglin came up with the idea for this project as he was finishing his last book, about resorts and leisure in Bath, England.  While reading a manuscript from Richard Nash, an early businessman in Bath, who sued his business partners to receive more profits from their gambling business, Eglin decided to look deeper into the history of this gambling craze.

            The book starts by looking at the original “lotteries” founded by the crown to raise money for the expansion of its military but grew to include businesspeople who saw the profit in gambling.  Bath, in the heart of Somerset, England, was the site of one of the first gambling resorts.  The growth of the industry led the crown to tax it heavily to cut out competition for its own gambling interests.

            As Eglin shows, the obsession with gambling throughout the 1700s transformed British society.  From 1750 onward, Eglin found that overall, understanding of mathematics, insurance, and liability increased thanks to the gambling industry.

            The book was published by Oxford University Press and is now in full print and available for purchase at this link: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-gambling-century-9780192888198?cc=us&lang=en&