Prospectus for contributing authors

1. Eligible Topics

At the final colloquium session, we proposed a few keywords to describe the core themes of the volume of essays for which we are aiming: paper money, public finance and political writing (roughly corresponding to the three themes announced in the title of the colloquium). Having thought about it some more, we're now asking, more specifically, for papers that:

1. describe the institutional details of key financial innovations introduced during this period (especially paper money, banking, joint-stock corporations, and public debt);
2. show how the new financial devices interacted with politics at the national level, especially in the struggle to win parliamentary approval for concrete programs of public finance; and/or
3. explore the ways in which contemporary literature (including plays, academic treatises, novels, newspapers and partisan pamphlets) portrayed innovations in finance, in particular how the latter two kinds of literature were used to influence and frame political debates about specific issues of public finance (especially large-scale increases in the public debt)

Your paper doesn't need to address all three themes; but at least one of them must be central to your presentation, and the more the better.

2. Stylistic Considerations

We will insist upon papers that are genuinely interdisciplinary, i.e. accessible to non-specialists. We believe this will make the book more valuable to potential readers and more appealing to potential publishers.

Authors will need to work especially hard on this point, since even at the colloquium itself participants were often unable to follow the specialist talk of disciplines other than their own. Specifically, you should:

1. focus on questions of interest to a broad audience;
2. assume readers have no expert or specialist knowledge in your field; and
3. clearly explain or (preferably) remove any specialist terms

We urge delegates to stay in contact and share ideas with one another during the revision process. This will assist in keeping your papers genuinely interdisciplinary. It will also help in setting the agenda for future colloquia, research, and publications.

3. Submission process and publication timelines

Many papers will need considerable revision to achieve consistency with the guidelines set out above. Not everyone will be interested in putting in the required investment of time and energy. But if you are, we ask that you start the process by submitting a 1-2 page paper proposal.

Please a) clearly identify the central theme (which may be considerably different from the theme chosen for your conference papers); b) show how it fits with one or more of the three topic areas; and c) describe the specific changes you plan to undertake in order to make your paper thoroughly consistent with the stated guidelines. Send your proposal before 30 September 2004 to any one of the three editors (we prefer email). We promise to get back to you with a yes or no decision by the end of October. (Please note that in accepting your proposal we do not bind ourselves to accept the final product; you will need to deliver what you promise.)

With the accepted proposals in hand we will approach leading academic publishers. Contributors will be notified as soon as we receive a favourable reply. You will then be asked to submit a new draft of your paper (at that time we will also specify a house style). We are aiming to have a complete set of final drafts in our hands by June 2005.