In order to finance its war with the American revolutionaries as well as its many wars with France in the revolutionary and Napoleonic eras, the British monarchy chose to borrow without limit. The public debt consequently rose to 100 percent of national income in the early 1770s and to nearly 200 percent in the 1810s—10 times France’s debt in the same period. It would take a century of budget surpluses to gradually reduce Britain’s debt to under 30 percent of national income in the 1910s
