Results

The colloquium, held at the Moore Institute in Galway, Ireland, from 8-10 June 2022, featured papers on money (paper and coin) in the colonial American context, finance and theater, new work in understanding credit networks, and further insights in the mechanics of the financial revolution. The biggest strengths, we felt, were in new ways of understanding American colonial credit and money in light of other developments we usually attribute to the Financial Revolution.

We identified several ways in which topics diverged from previous colloquia. For one, we generally moved toward discussions of money rather than credit, and many papers had an administrative focus. Most texts under discussion were non-literary, with the exception of a discussion of a new edition on Dutch plays about finance. The power-print angle of the MPP triad was less emphasized than in previous years. In the past, and especially in our 2018 colloquium, there were many references to P.G.M. Dickson and John Brewer. This was not the case this year, and we concluded that the cultural importance of the Financial Revolution has set in and no longer has to be argued for so explicitly.

With regard to organization, this year’s colloquium broke with tradition. For example, we did not choose any original texts for discussion owing to time constraints, but we featured a discussion of a new edition of seventeenth-century plays. We did not stay at the same hotel, although we were able to organize lunches and dinners together. Most notably, we offered a hybrid option, allowing some participants to take part via Zoom. And we were unable to vet the papers ahead of time to the degree that it is usually done. Much of the planning meeting addressed these abnormalities, and we concluded that we will return to the MPP format as we move ahead with planning for future events.