John Eglin's new monograph, The Gambling Century: Commercial Gaming in Britain from Restoration to Regency, is a welcome addition to the mosaic of eighteenth-century British studies. The Gambling Century follows the business of making money via games of chance, beginning with the introduction of courtly French gaming culture, discussing its evolution and expansion into British streets, and examining Westminster's various attempts to legislate it away. Eglin argues that the central goals of anti-gaming campaigns, legal and otherwise, were to protect the riches of Britain's ruling elites from predatory games and gamesters. The fear of an impoverished aristocracy and an instantly wealthier underclass invoked a “world turned upside down”: for many, society itself was the stake on the green baize. For The Gambling Century, Eglin draws on a wide array of contemporary and scholarly sources to make his case. Probability theory, in its infancy in the mid-seventeenth century, is crucial to his argument, and he gives it its own chapter, grounding his argument about its importance to gaming theory and law in a thorough (and blessedly clear) explanation.

Eglin makes use of all the usual secondary-source suspects on the history of gaming and of probability theory, as well as Robert Harris's newer study, Gambling in Britain in the Long Eighteenth Century (2022). Eglin fills an obvious gap in the historiography, addressing the business side of gaming, whether at Court under the aegis of the Groom Porter, in the gentlemen's clubs of St. James's, or in the sub rosa gaming houses of Westminster. Although earlier studies have touched on this aspect of British gaming culture, this is the first full-length exploration of the period's gaming entrepreneurs and the laws that attempted to rein them in. Eglin delves into a variety of settings and setups on both sides of the law. While quite a lot of work has been done on gaming in the long eighteenth century, Eglin's is the first study that looks at the business model of providing a space for play, licit or otherwise.

Since Elgin is arguing that the goal of anti-gaming laws was to protect elite wealth (and by extension, society's hierarchy), the gaming of the aristocracy takes center stage here. In addition, while it's been established that the middling sort (especially men) did play in commercial-gaming settings, tradesmen and professional men make up a small minority in court records, which are at the heart of The Gambling Century. And while the play of the laboring poor is mentioned, these people as individuals are grossly underrepresented in the available primary sources, which makes them nearly impossible to study in any meaningful way. The sources, as always, limit as much as they enable the work of the historian.

The discussion of change over time is where The Gambling Century really shines. This study begins with the rise of probability theory in the years following the Restoration and follows the effects of that thinking as it shaped the thinking of the press, the public, and especially the legislators of the long eighteenth century. Eglin traces the goals and outcomes of anti-gaming legislation and its applications during the late Stuart and especially the Georgian eras, and ends with the finality and broad reach of the early-Victorian Gaming Act of 1845. It is not all about the laws, either; Eglin brings us into the gaming settings and introduces us to the people who made them work, as well as the critics who preached and published anti-gaming screeds. The arc of the argument (and the story) is clear, tracing the evolution of public attitudes toward gaming, especially as a money-making operation. While legislation and court records are the primary-source backbone of this study, Eglin also makes use of contemporary commentary, from published sermons and essays to plays and collections of letters. The result is a social history, rather than a legal or economic history, and it's all the more richly readable for that.

Eglin isn't just a good empiricist and a thorough researcher; he's also a strong writer of concise, readable prose. He presents his arguments lucidly and without jargon, and makes his points neatly and without overstatement. The images he has chosen aren't mere illustrations, but primary sources in their own right, adding the voices and experiences of contemporary artists, who knew whereof they drew. As a gamester himself, Thomas Rowlandson is perhaps the gold standard in this regard, but the work of Gillray and others also adds much to the word-picture Eglin draws.

A minor quibble: Elgin's subtitle promises coverage of Britain, but the study doesn't really deliver. Yes, the legislation enacted over Eglin's chosen time period applied across Great Britain, but with the exception of two very fleeting mentions of Ireland, the only region getting deep examination is the metropolis and especially Westminster. Aside from the legal aspects, the on-the-ground evidence from court records and newspapers backs up what is essentially a microhistory of gaming, especially by the elites, in the capital; gaming in county towns and at elite country houses gets short shrift. Also, the roughly chronological arc of the argument is broken by the (mis?)placement of chapter 3, which acts more as a case study of sharpers and their world than as background to commercial gaming; in my view, it belongs at a later point in the chapter sequence. (I sympathize with this problem; achieving a strong chapter/argument sequence can be a hair-pullingly fraught exercise.)

These points aside, The Gambling Century is a well-researched, thoroughly argued, and masterly work, and will be useful for any student of the gaming culture of Britain's long eighteenth century. It is not just a welcome addition to existing scholarship, but a very interesting read as well.