This essays explores and discusses the recent historiography on the evolution of the British State during the eighteenth century. It underlines how historiography tends to highlight at the same time the exceptionality of the British case and its elements of affinity with the continental evolution, trying to cope with the fact that Great Britain avoided major social and political unrests at the turn of the eighteenth century. The essay ends by suggesting that the major crisis of the British State was represented by the American crisis and the end of the "old colonial system" or "First British Empire".
