As shown above, Mint Message has a top 10 YouTube video that explains a lot about the concept of a nightwatchman state: a form of government without a monopoly on violence where a state with the least possible number of powers that are needed to uphold the law. One of the things mentioned in this video is a historian that went to help popularize the concept of a nightwatchman state - a historian who goes by the name of Charles Townshend.
Charles was born on July 27th of 1945 and would eventually go on to go to college. The thing is, the particular college that Mr. Townshend decided that he wanted to attend was Oriel College - a constituent college of the University of Oxford (for those who do not know, a constituent college is one of the thirty-nine colleges that are part of Oxford University that allows many other people who cannot go to the main campus to attend the college). During this time, Charles got a Bachelor's Degree in History in 1967 and a Doctorate in Philosophy in 1973. Soon, he became a historian that wrote plenty of texts about libertarianism and had these texts peer-reviewed by many of his fellow historical experts, so these writings are specifically double-checked to try to ensure their historical accuracy!
One of the things Charles Townshend describes is how parts of Britain during the nineteenth century were nightwatchman states until the government transitioned to prepare for the first World War in his peer-reviewed historical text The Oxford History of Modern War :
Britain, however, with its strong tradition of minimal government – the 'night-watchman state' – vividly illustrated the speed of the shift [during World War I] from normalcy to drastic and all-embracing wartime powers like those contained in the Defence of the Realm Act. - Charles Townshend
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