Participants

Arne Bialuschewski

Greed, Fraud, and Popular Culture: the Madagascar Schemes of the Early Eighteenth Century

Abstract

The period after the Glorious Revolution is sometimes called the "Projecting Age". It is generally assumed that the closing off of trading opportunities after the outbreak of war created idle funds that ended up in highly speculative ventures. Between 1703 and 1709 several attempts were made to launch an expedition to Madagascar and repatriate the pirates who were supposed to have taken refuge there. It was intended to sell the pirates a general amnesty for a considerable share of their immense treasures. Various efforts to promote this project eventually led to the emergence of a Madagascar myth. The plan was never translated into action, but there are many documents preserved that shed some light on the projectors, their potential investors, and the role that the government played in such an undertaking. Moreover, the history of the Madagascar schemes illuminates the state of the financial markets both in Scotland and in England prior to the establishment of the South Sea Company.

Affiliation

Research Fellow, Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, King's College, London

Publications

"Die Auswanderungswelle des Jahres 1709: Zur Genese einer Massenbewegung". Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins (October 2003).

"Between Newfoundland and the Malacca Strait: a Survey of the Golden Age of Piracy, 1695-1725". Mariner's Mirror (February 2004).

"Daniel Defoe, Nathaniel Mist, and the General History of the Pyrates". Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America (March 2004)

Linda Bomstad

Money, Method and Motivation in John Locke

Abstract

John Locke's views on money are commonly understood to be a starting point for discussions of economic theory in this period. This paper begins with a brief overview of Locke's views on money, and the economic and political context in which he developed them. Then I describe the basic features of Locke's theory of language in order to show its relationship to his method of addressing issues concerning money. In particular, Locke's view of language sheds light on the notably 'static' nature of his monetary theory. In my discussion I refer mainly to relevant parts of Locke's Two Treatises of Government, his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Books II and III), and his pamphlet polemics.

Affiliation

Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Philosophy, California Polytechnic State University

Publications

"Locke's Connection to Recent Realist Theories of Kinds". (At revise and resubmit stage with peer-reviewed journal.)

GMAT-CAT, with Fred O'Toole and Mark Stewart. (Macmillan, 1998, 2000).

"Advocating Procedural Neutrality," Teaching Philosophy 18:3 (September 1995).

"North American Perspectives on Teaching Critical Thinking," Argumentation 3:2 (Spring 1989). Guest editor with Perry Wendle.

Critical Thinking News (CSU Sacramento Center for the Reasoning Arts). Guest editor with Perry Wendle, 1985-89.

Michael Brown

The Place of Political Economy in the Irish Enlightenment

Abstract

This paper examines the brief flurry of economic writings that emerged in Ireland between Swift's Drapier's Letters (1724-5) and Berkeley's Querist (1735-7). While the Irish school of political economy was deeply indebted to mercantilist thinking, it was ultimately to break with that approach in the matter of paper currency, the balance of trade and of supply-led economic development. This series of theoretical breakthroughs have commonly been related to the peculiar political circumstance of Ireland, with its colonial dependence on England hampering commercial and industrial development and exacerbating the economy's structural deficiencies. In contrast, this paper argues that the intellectual, as well as the material, context of the school was central to these innovations. In particular, it highlights the existence of a broader Irish Enlightenment, which was utilising languages of politeness and economic improvement. Political economy played a central role in bringing together these discourses, thereby offering a full diagnosis of the difficulties confronting Ireland's political economy in the mid-eighteenth century.

Affiliation

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Centre for Irish-Scottish Studies, Trinity College Dublin

Publications

The Irish Enlightenment, 1690-1798. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, forthcoming.

Converts and Conversion in Ireland, 1650-1850 (ed. with Charles Ivar McGrath and Thomas Power). Dublin: Four Courts Press, forthcoming.

Universities and the Common Good in Early Modern Europe (ed. with Helga Robinson-Hammerstein). Dublin: Four Courts Press, forthcoming.

"The Strange Case of Dr. King and Mr. Hutcheson." In Christopher Fauske (ed.), Archbishop William King and the Anglican Irish Contexts (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003), 125-137.

"The Injured Lady and her British Problem: the Union in Political Thought." In Patrick M. Geoghegan and James Kelly (eds.), The Irish Act of Union: Bicentennial Essays (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2003), 37-49.

"John Toland and the Problem of the Irish Enlightenment." In Edna Longley, Eamonn Hughes and Des O'Rawe (eds.), Ireland (Ulster) Scotland: Concepts, Contexts, Comparisons (Belfast, 2003).

Francis Hutcheson in Dublin, 1719-1730: the Crucible of his Thought. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2002.

"Does Revolution Make Moral Sense? Political Options in Ireland and Scotland in the 1790s". Bullán 6:2 (Winter/Spring 2002):67-81.

The Medieval World and the Modern Mind (ed. with Stephen Harrison). Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000.

"The Medieval Critic: the Strange Trajectory of Alasdair MacIntyre". In Stephen Harrison (ed.), The Medieval World and the Modern Mind (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), 27-39.

"Creating a Canon: Dugald Stewart's Construction of the Scottish Enlightenment". History of Universities, vol. 16 (2000):135-54.

"Francis Hutcheson and the Molesworth Connection". Eighteenth-Century Ireland 14 (1999):62-76.

"The Ministry of Ethics: Francis Hutcheson and the Language of New Light Theology". In Kevin Herlihy (ed.), Propagating the Word of Irish Dissent (Dublin, 1998), 95-113.

Noel Chevalier

Tradesman's Holiday: The Financial Revolution and the English Stage

Abstract

Liz Bellamy's 1998 study, Commerce, Morality and the Eighteenth-Century Novel, examines the effects of eighteenth-century economic theory on the novel—a genre which, she argues, accorded well with what she calls the "feminised private domestic virtue which was increasingly cultivated by the bourgeoisie" (45). However, the patent theatre houses—especially after the Licensing Act of 1737 curtailed plays on more public subjects, such as politics—also became sites where these "private domestic virtues" could be explored, challenged, satirised, or endorsed. This paper will examine some of the strategies employed by eighteenth-century stage comedy to represent both the rising middle class—in particular, the new wealth generated by mercantilism—and the moral values associated with the Financial Revolution, especially after the consolidation of Whig power after 1714.

Affiliation

Assistant Professor, English, Luther College, University of Regina

Publications

"Redeeming the Nabob: Frances Burney, Warren Hastings, and the Cultural Construction of India in A Busy Day." The Burney Journal 2 (1999):24-39.

Review of The Mughal Empire and its Decline: an Interpretation of the Sources of Social Power by Andrea Hintze. In The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography (forthcoming).

Review of The Rocks: Life in Early Sydney by Grace Karskens. In The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography (forthcoming).

Review of Dracula: Sense and Nonsense by Elizabeth Miller. In English Studies in Canada 28:4 (December 2002):749-51.

"English Credit, English Plays: Mercantile Identity in Susanna Centlivre's Late Plays." American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Boston, March-24-28, 2004.

"Loyalist Gods, Republican Monsters: Hannah More, Evangelical Christianity, and Enlightenment Education." North-East American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, CUNY, New York, New York, October, 2002.

"Mad Science, Political Justice, and Frankenstein." Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science Conference, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia, June 25-28, 2001.

"Hannah More: Female Education, Christianity and Middle-Class Domestic Ideology." Women in the Republic of Letters Conference, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, November 1-4, 2000.

"Mercantile Identity and Merchant Comedy: The Private Self and the Eighteenth-Century Stage." Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of Toronto, October 19-21, 2000.

Alan Downie

Gulliver's Travels, the contemporary debate on the financial revolution, and the public sphere

Abstract

Considers Swift's commentary on the methods for financing war and the associated rise of the monied interest. Examines his work in conjunction with other contemporary comments. Evaluates their validity. Concludes with observations on Habermas' thesis about the founding of the Bank of England and the emergence of the bourgeois public sphere at the turn of the eighteenth century.

Affiliation

Pro-Warden (Academic) & Professor of English, Goldsmiths College, University of London

Publications

Constructing Christopher Marlowe (ed. with J.T. Parnell). Cambridge University Press, 2000.

"The Making of the English Novel". Eighteenth-Century Fiction 9.3 (1997):249-266.

To Settle the Succession of the State: Literature and Politics, 1678-1750. Macmillan, 1994.

Robert Harley and the press: propaganda and public opinion in the age of Swift and Defoe. Cambridge University Press, 1979.

Christopher Fauske

Misunderstanding what Swift misunderstood: contemporary Irish economic theory in the early eighteenth century

Abstract

Jonathan Swift is perhaps the best known of contemporary commentators on the Irish condition in the first 20 years of the eighteenth century. His popularity, however, has seldom translated into a consideration of the contexts in which he wrote. While some of Swift's reading suggests he was aware of the ideas which would later emerge as the initial theories of modern-day economics, his public writings appear nonetheless to draw very explicitly on traditional mercantilist precepts. One fundamental misreading of his ideas has resulted: Modern readers who seldom have an understanding of the radical disconnect between mercantilist theory and economic theory read Swift as if he were making an argument that he is not making, and which he knows he is not making. Because Swift's writings are often perceived as a valid criticism of contemporary Irish society this has the ironic consequence of confusing more than even Swift intended the matter of what was contemporaneously understood of economic conditions of his time. This paper discusses what Swift did and did not understand of fiscal affairs and demonstrates how understanding his understanding sheds light on the contemporary literary uses made of a complex set of economic issues.

Affiliation

Assistant Dean, School of Arts and Sciences, Salem State College, Salem, MA

Publications

"Side by Side in a Small Country": Bishop John Frederick MacNeice and Ireland. Keady, Northern Ireland: Church of Ireland Historical Society, forthcoming.

"John Frederick MacNeice." Dictionary of Irish Biography. Ed. James McGuire et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.

An Uncomfortable Authority: Maria Edgeworth and Her Contexts (ed. with Heidi Kaufman). Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004.

Archbishop William King and the Anglican Irish Context (ed.). Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003.

Jonathan Swift and the Church of Ireland, 1710-24. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2002.

Take Charge of Your Writing: the Power of Self-assessment. With David Daniel, Peter Galeno and Debbie Mael. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

"Some Other Culture: Maori Literature as a Unifying Force in a Multicultural Classroom." Teaching English in the Two-Year College 26:1 (Sept. 1998):18-24.

"Boyle, John (Orrery and Cork, Earl of)." Dictionary of Irish Literature Ed. Robert Hogan. Greenwood, Ct: Greenwood Press, 1996.

"A Life Merely Glimpsed: Louis MacNeice at the End of the Anglo-Irish Tradition." Politics and the Rhetoric of Poetry: Perspectives on Modern Anglo-Irish Poetry. Ed. Tjebbe Westendorp and Jane Mallinson (Amsterdam, Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1995), 181-98.

"A Life Merely Glimpsed: Louis MacNeice at the End of the Anglo-Irish Tradition." Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 20.1 (Summer 1994):17-29.

"A Matter of Dates: Yeats, Starkie, and The Silver Tassie." Notes and Queries 235 (Dec. 1990):439-41.

Christopher Finlay

The Politics of Ambivalence: Financial Revolution and the Scottish Enlightenment

Abstract

The era immediately following the revolution of 1688 was marked by transformations at various levels in British society. Writing in the 1740s, David Hume noted how the critics appeared to have it all their own way, stating their arguments more vehemently and making a pro-government position seem increasingly indefensible. He sought to redress the balance through philosophically moderate publications designed to achieve a language of analysis and criticism adequate to the complexities of the new order. He was not, however, without reservations himself and he was particularly critical of public debt.

Hume's writings initiated the most potent ideological initiative of the 18th century in Britain, and if Bolingbroke's circle of critics was driven as Isaac Kramnick has argued by a "politics of nostalgia", the writers of the Scottish Enlightenment may perhaps be characterised by a "politics of ambivalence", expressed in partial legitimation of British commercial and financial modernity.

Affiliation

Research Fellow & Academic Coordinator, MA Programme in European Studies, Dublin European Institute, University College Dublin

Publications

"James Balfour," and "Sir James Mackintosh," New Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

"Philosophy and the Individual in Commercial Society: towards an interpretation of David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, Books I and II". In Bob Morris and Liam Kennedy (eds.), Ireland and Scotland: Order and Disorder, 1600-2001 (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2003).

"Money and Civil Society in 18th-Century Scotland: an Essay on Hume's Political Economy". In Eamonn Hughes, Edna Longley and Des O'Rawe (eds.), Belfast Studies in Language, Culture and Politics (Belfast: Queen's University Belfast, 2003).

"Enlightenment and the University: Philosophy, Communication and Education in the Early Writings of David Hume". In Mordechai Feingold (ed.), History of Universities, vol. 16 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

James Hartley

Beyond Robinson Crusoe: Defoe and Economics

Abstract

Robinson Crusoe captures the essential features of an economy in a small space, providing a useful model for organising thoughts about the economy. Much less known to economists is the rest of Daniel Defoe's work, despite the fact that Defoe wrote extensively on economic matters. In these writings, Defoe provides, for example, an inside view into conditions which generated a widespread belief in mercantilist economic theories. These theories were swept out of economics by Adam Smith and David Ricardo, with the result that the defenders of mercantilist theory have largely been forgotten. Defoe's work provides a lens by which to examine how the conditions of his time were related to pre-Adam Smith economic doctrine. As Defoe's work shows, the financial upheavals of the early 18th century were in large part responsible for the popular beliefs about what sorts of economic policies would be best for society.

Affiliation

Associate Professor of Economics, Mount Holyoke College

Publications

"Modigliani's Expectations," Eastern Economic Journal (forthcoming).

"Mutual Deposit Insurance: Other Lessons from the Record", The Independent Review 6.2 (Fall 2001):235-52.

"The Great Books and Economics", Journal of Economic Education 32.2 (Spring 2001):147-59.

"Real Myths and a Monetary Fact," Applied Economics 31 (1999):1325-29.

Real Business Cycles: a Reader (ed. with Kevin D. Hoover and Kevin D. Salyer). London: Routledge, 1998.

The Representative Agent in Macroeconomics. London: Routledge, 1997.

"The Limits of Business Cycle Research: Assessing the Real Business Cycle Model" (with Kevin D. Hoover and Kevin D. Salyer). Oxford Review of Economic Policy 13.3 (1997):34-54.

"The Origins of the Representative Agent," Journal of Economic Perspectives 10.2 (Spring 1996):169-77.

Richard Kleer

A most conservative revolution: paper money and English war finance, 1689-97

Abstract

Though England witnessed something of a revolution in public finance after 1688, in at least one respect the government's behaviour was very conservative. Numerous contemporary projectors had advised using one or another form of paper money to help reduce the fiscal burden of war. Though most projects seem likely to have worked as advertised, in the end only a handful were ever adopted, and those on very limited terms. This paper examines four important cases in which the government considered using paper currencies (the Bank of England, the silver recoinage of 1696, the National Land Bank, and Exchequer bills) to establish the nature and explore the sources of its conservatism.

Affiliation

Head & Associate Professor of Economics, University of Regina

Publications

"'The ruine of their Diana': Lowndes, Locke and the bankers", History of Political Economy (Fall 2004 forthcoming).

"Reading the Wealth of Nations in context: rethinking the canon of mid-18th century British political economy." In Reflections on the classical canon in economics, ed. E. Forget & S. Peart (Routledge, 2001).

"The role of teleology in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations", History of Economics Review 31 (Winter 2000):14-29.

"The decay of trade: the politics of economic theory in eighteenth-century Britain", Journal of the History of Economic Thought 18 (1996):319-46.

Eoin Magennis

Ireland, economics and the "poor nation" debate in the 18th century

Abstract

The paper will look at the crisis of Ireland's economic under-development (specifically in the formative period of the Dublin Society [1732-1757]) and the responses this provoked in its political elite. It will examine the character of the crisis (low prices for commodities, harvest failures and dearth/famine, pressure on the manufacturing base, lack of money for both trade and investment) and the varied contemporary responses. Some maintained the problem lay with the colonial setting (either the Navigation Laws of the lack of an Act of Union) and others with Ireland itself (papists, absentee landlords, lack of patriotism, vagrancy, and lack of capital and/or currency). It will focus on political uses of the argument that Ireland, a "poor nation", posed an economic threat to Britain.

Affiliation

Book Review Editor, Eighteenth-Century Ireland and Joint Editor, Seanchas Ard Mhacha

Publications

"Walter Harris and the Errors of Irish History," in Clare O'Halloran (ed.), What Is My Nation?: Identities of Ireland. Cork: Cork University Press, forthcoming.

Debates over Ireland and the First World War (ed. with Crónán Ó Doibhlin). Armagh: Eigse Orialla, forthcoming.

"The Origins of the Armagh Troubles: A Document." Seanchas Ard Mhacha 19:2 (2003).

"A Land of Milk and Honey: The Physico-Historical Society (1744-1752) and the Improvement of Ireland," Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, section C, 103 (2003).

"Patriotism, Popery and Politics: The 1753 By-election in County Armagh," in A.J. Hughes (ed.), Armagh: History and Society. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2002.

"Protestant Nationalism in Ulster, 1890-1910: Francis Joseph Bigger and the writing of The Ulster Land War of 1770," Seanchas Ard Mhacha 18.2 (2001).

The Irish Political System, 1740-1765. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000.

Crowds in Ireland, 1720-1920 (ed. with Peter Jupp). Houndsmills: Palgrave, 2000.

"Coal, Corn and Canals: the Dispersal of Public Moneys, 1695-1712," In David Hayton (ed.), The Irish Parliament in the Eighteenth Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001).

"A Presbyterian Insurrection: Reconsidering the Hearts of Oak disturbances of July 1763," Irish Historical Studies 21 (1999).

C. Ivar McGrath

National Debt, Public Credit, and Community Identity: The Irish Experience of "Financial Revolution", 1716-54

Abstract

In 1753 the Irish House of Commons rejected a bill for repayment of part of the Irish National Debt. Amid the plethora of pamphlets on the issue, a phrase in one piece stood out: "the public wealth is the sinew, the life, of every public measure." While some work has been done on private credit systems in Ireland, little attention has been paid to the advent of a National Debt in Ireland. This paper will focus upon the first phases of the history of that debt, in the years 1716-54. The main concern of the paper will be with the extent to which the existence of the debt in itself represented an expression of a new-found confidence within the protestant community in their own sense of identity as the "Irish protestant nation," as demonstrated by their willingness to act as the government's public creditors.

Affiliation

Lecturer, School of History, University College Dublin

Publications

Converts and Conversion in Ireland, 1650-1850. Edited with Michael Brown and T. P. Power. Dublin: Four Courts Press. Forthcoming 2004.

"The provisions for conversion in the penal laws, 1695-1750". In Converts and Conversion in Ireland, 1650-1850. Ed. Michael Brown, C. I. McGrath, and T. P. Power. Dublin: Four Courts Press. Forthcoming 2004.

"English Ministers, Irish Politicians and the Making of a Parliamentary Settlement in Ireland, 1692-5". English Historical Review cxix (June 2004):585-613.

"Parliament, People, and other Possibilities," Eighteenth-Century Ireland 17 (2002): 157-66.

"Parliamentary Additional Supply: the Development and Use of Regular Short-term Taxation in the Irish Parliament, 1692-1716," Parliamentary History 20 (2001):27-54.

"Central Aspects of the Eighteenth-Century Constitutional Framework in Ireland: the Government Supply Bill and Biennial Parliamentary Sessions, 1715-82," Eighteenth-Century Ireland 16 (2001):9-34.

The Making of the Eighteenth-Century Irish Constitution: Government, Parliament and the Revenue, 1692-1714. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000.

"Securing the Protestant Interest: Policy, Politics and Parliament in Ireland in the Aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, 1690-95". In Thomas Bartlett (ed.), History and Environment (Dublin: UCD, 1998), 70-81.

"Securing the Protestant Interest: the Origins and Purpose of the Penal Laws of 1695," Irish Historical Studies 30 (1996-7):25-46.

Sean Moore

Currency vs. Culture: the Anglo-Irish Literary Counter-Culture to Ireland's Public Sphere

Abstract

Focussing on eighteenth-century Anglo-Irish society, this paper will ask how the creation of Ireland's first national debt in 1715—the so-called "Debt of the Nation"—began to form a distinctly Anglo-Irish public sphere. Because Ireland was still a strongly sectarian culture at the time, however, this "Republic of Debt" was limited to the Anglican governing minority, preventing a more broadly-based public from forming. This sectarian nature of lending to the government was probably the most important factor that prevented a joint-stock Bank of Ireland from being established during the Irish Parliamentary session of 1721-22. The economic satires Jonathan Swift produced concerning these matters were very much against the notion of such a national debt-based public sphere, forming the first colonial literature that is distinctly modernist one that stages a protest against economic modernization, but by doing so, offers a more "private" counter-culture to the public sphere.

Affiliation

Assistant Professor, English Department, University of New Hampshire

Publications

Critical Receptions: Jonathan Swift. Dublin: Maunsel, forthcoming.

"Satiric Norms, Swift's Financial Satires, and the Bank of Ireland Controversy of 1720-1721." Eighteenth-Century Ireland 17 (2003).

"The Culture of Paper Credit: the New Economic Criticism and the Postcolonial Eighteenth Century." The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 44 (2003).

"Taking the Bull by the Horns: the Edgeworths' Essay on Irish Bulls and the Historicizing of Irish 'Sly Civility'", in Karen Vandevelde (ed.), New Voices in Irish Criticism. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2002.

"'Anglo-Irish' Hybridity: Problems in Miscegenation, Representation, and Postcolonialism in Irish Studies." Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies 7.1 (Spring 2000).

Steven Pincus

A revolution in political economy? Rethinking the Glorious Revolution

Abstract

England's financial revolution is usually seen as an unintended consequence of the Glorious Revolution. This paper suggests instead that the Revolution itself was in part the result of a great debate between competing visions of political economy. James II pursued a coherent and aggressive commercial and imperial policy based on the assumption that trade was a zero-sum game. His opponents, including a range of East India and African company interlopers and Whig politicians, understood trade to be infinitely expandable based on the industry of human labour. These merchants and politicians wanted a national bank, the elimination of trading monopolies, and taxes on land rather than manufactures. James II's commercial opponents invested in William's invasion. At the revolution they repealed the hearth tax, instituted a land tax, attempted to destroy the East India Company, and created the Bank of England.

Affiliation

Associate Professor of History, University of Chicago

Publications

England in an Age of Revolution. New Oxford History of England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

England's Glorious Revolution: a Documentary History of the First Modern Revolution. Bedford, NY: Bedford Press, forthcoming.

The First Modern Revolution: England's Glorious Revolution 1688-89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.

To Prevent a Universal Monarchy: English Political Culture and Images of Power in Seventeenth Century Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press, forthcoming.

The Public Sphere in Early Modern England (ed. with Peter Lake). Manchester: Manchester University Press, forthcoming.

"John Evelyn: Revolutionary," British Library Bulletin. Forthcoming.

"A Revolution in Political Economy," in A. Williams (ed.), Rethinking the Whigs. Newark: University of Delaware Press, forthcoming.

A Nation Transformed: Reinterpreting Later Stuart Britain (ed. with Alan Houston). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Protestantism and Patriotism: Ideologies and the Making of English Foreign Policy, 1650-1668. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; paperback ed., 2002.

"The Glorious Revolution," Blackwell's Compass (2002).

"The Making of a Great Power? Universal Monarchy, Political Economy, and the Transformation of English Political Culture," The European Legacy (Dec. 2000).

"Neither Machiavellian Moment nor Possessive Individualism: Commercial Society and the Defenders of the English Commonwealth", American Historical Review (June 1998).

"To Protect English Liberties: the English Nationalist Revolution of 1688-89". In Ian McBride and Tony Claydon (eds.), Protestantism and National Identity: Britain and Ireland, c. 1650-c. 1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

"Reconceiving Seventeenth Century Political Culture," Journal of British Studies (1998).

"The British Glorious Revolution," in Jack Goldstone (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Political Revolutions. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Books, 1998.

"The English Origins of Nationalism," in George Steinmetz (ed.), Culture/State. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998.

"'Coffee Politicians Does Create': Coffee Houses and Restoration Political Culture," in Journal of Modern History (Dec. 1995).

"Shadwell's Dramatic Trimming". In Donna Hamilton and Richard Strier (eds.), Albion's Conscience: Religion and Politics 1580-1680. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Stephen Timmons

The hearth tax and customs duties in the West Country

Abstract

Customs Duties found greater public acceptance (or less dislike) in Devon and Cornwall than the Hearth Tax, because it levied a more flexible, indirect form of assessment, and because it provided a more acceptable means of enforcement. Customs Duties tapped into a shifting market of imported goods that included both luxury items, like wine, and commodities, like wool, that undergirded the region's manufacturing. It was paid by merchants who added its cost into the purchase price of the item. The Hearth Tax, in contrast, assessed a static form of wealth, which in its use could be considered a household necessity, a business investment, or an additional luxury. Its payment came due regardless of people's relative income or affluence, and of whether the region was experiencing economic prosperity or recession.

The burgeoning bureaucracy of the Customs Service furnished employment to local mariners and businessmen who were already the competitors of more successful merchants and shipmasters. Resistance to customs collections (smuggling) thus became a part of a regular game played between natural rivals. Obstructing the collection of the Hearth Tax also meant defying the authority of the constables and justices of the peace charged with its ingathering. Popular resentment towards the Hearth Tax implied resistance to the regime, and quickly became a part of the political platform of West Country radicals, then of the Whig opposition there during the Exclusion Crisis of 1679-1681, and finally of the broad spectrum of revolutionaries from the region in 1688. The Hearth Tax failed in Devon and Cornwall as an instrument of fiscal policy both because of its political liabilities and because of its economic shortcomings.

Affiliation

Adjunct Professor of History, Columbus State Community College

Publications

"Executions Following Monmouth's Rebellion: A Missing Link," Historical Research (May 2003).

"Witchcraft, Rebellion, and Religious Dissent in Prerevolutionary Devon." Presented at "Of Seditions and Troubles: Representing Treason and Sedition in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Periods, 1400-1700," English Department, University College, Dublin, 21-23 March 2002.

"Three Models of Witchcraft Accusations." Presented as part of the Arts and Sciences Lecture Series, Columbus State CC, 8 May 2002.

Paul Tonks

Scottish Political Economy and the Ideological Defence of the Eighteenth-Century British Fiscal-Military State

Abstract

The British fiscal-military state was at the heart of ideological conflict in the eighteenth century. Rival historical interpretations of its growth, impact and durability were central to this key political battle. My paper examines the articulation by leading Scottish writers of a historically framed discourse in defence of the established order. These commentators employed and adapted the insights of Scottish political economy to associate progress with the institutions of the state and to rebut the challenge from radicals as naïve due to their rejection of the post-Glorious Revolution structures and practices on which British security rested. They described the historical progress of socio-economic improvement in Britain across the eighteenth century through statistical analysis and engaged with central concerns of figures such as David Hume and Adam Smith in their historical political economy of state-formation, particularly the functioning and prospects of public credit.

Affiliation

Doctoral Candidate, Department of History, Johns Hopkins University

Publications

"Cadwallader Colden". In New Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

Review of Ned Landsman, ed., Nation and Province in the First British Empire: Scotland and the Americas, 1600-1800 (Cranbury, NJ & London, 2001). In Eighteenth-Century Scotland (Spring 2002).

Review of John Coffey, Politics, Religion and the British Revolutions: The Mind of Samuel Rutherford(Cambridge University Press, 1997). In Eighteenth-Century Scotland (Spring 1998).

Carl Wennerlind

Credit in African Bodies: How the Slave Trade Contributed to the Financial Revolution

Abstract

The South Sea Company was chartered in 1711 with the mandate to relieve part of the public debt by creating £10 million worth of shares—more than eight times the size of the Bank of England's initial credit expansion—to be exchanged for the heavily discounted outstanding navy debt. In order to make this transaction desirable to the debt holders, the government guaranteed the company a yearly sum and, most importantly, granted the company the sole rights to the slave trade to Spanish America. This meant that for the first eight years of the company's existence, before fully turning into a finance company in 1719, the South Sea Company operated primarily as a slave trading company. The public opinion was sufficiently optimistic about the prospect of the slave trade that they quickly subscribed the entire capital stock. In other words, the British public displayed a willingness to extend a massive amount of credit to the South Sea Company on the basis of the future proceeds from the purchase, shipment, and sale of African people. If we consider the extent of the South Sea Company's contribution to the early eighteenth-century expansion of credit and the importance of the profits from the slave trade to the formation of this new credit, we are forced to recognize that the slave trade constituted an important, though not necessary, condition for the emergence of the financial revolution. That is, contrary to one scholar's claim that the early years of the company were "relatively quiet and uncontroversial" (Murphy 1986, 68), I contend that this period reveals important features of the financial revolution, in particular credit's capacity to obfuscate the social relations of early modern economic development. For this reason, the South Sea Company deserves to be studied for reasons other than having shown the world during the South Sea Bubble how quickly credit can both expand and contract.

Scholars, such as John Brewer (1989), Douglass North and Barry Weingast (1989), and Bruce Carruthers (1996), have recently highlighted the centrality of the financial revolution to Britain's modernization process and argued for the repositioning of the advent of British political and economic modernity from the late eighteenth century to the 1690s. While these authors, in conjunction with P. G. M. Dickson (1967), Larry Neal (1990), and Henry Roseaveare (1991), have elaborated exhaustively on the technical features of the financial securities introduced, the political context of the advent of public credit, and the economic consequences of the issuance of new forms of money, the social costs associated with the financial revolution are largely ignored. My paper examines one of the dark side of the financial revolution, the much ignored relationship between the expansion of credit and the British slave trade. I discuss how one of the three major joint-stock companies behind the financial revolution—the South Sea Company—raised credit on the basis of its monopoly on the slave trade to Spanish America (The Assiento) and how this was used to shore up the nation's embattled public credit.

Affiliation

Assistant Professor of History, Barnard College

Publications

"David Hume's Monetary Theory Revisited: Was He Really a Quantity Theorist and an Inflationist?" Forthcoming in the Journal of Political Economy.

"The Death Penalty as Monetary Policy: The Practice and Punishment of Monetary Crime, 1690-1830." History of Political Economy 36:1 (Spring 2004):129-59.

"Credit-Money as the Philosopher's Stone: Alchemy and the Coinage Problem in Seventeenth-Century England." History of Political Economy Supplement to vol. 35 (2003):235-62.

"David Hume's Political Philosophy: A Theory of Commercial Modernization." Hume Studies 28 (November 2002):247-70.

"Money Talks, but What is it Saying? The Semiotics of Money and Social Control." Journal of Economic Issues 35 (September 2001):557-74.

"The Link between David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature and his Fiduciary Theory of Money." History of Political Economy 33.1 (Spring 2001):139-60.

"The Humean Paternity to Adam Smith's Theory of Money." History of Economic Ideas 8.1 (Spring 2000):77-97.