CFP: Money, Power and Prose: Interdisciplinary Studies of the Financial Revolution in the British Isles, 1688-1756 (Northern Ire

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Chris Fauske
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CALL FOR PAPERS
Money, Power and Prose: Interdisciplinary Studies of the Financial
Revolution in the British Isles, 1688-1756

Armagh, Northern Ireland
8-10 June 2006

This colloquium will gather scholars from the disciplines of history,
literature, economics, politics, sociology and law to study the
intersections between public finance, politics and literature during
Britain's so-called Financial Revolution.

Papers should address contemporary public responses to one or more of
the following aspects of the Financial Revolution:

* Banking (Public or Private)
* Joint-Stock Companies
* Stock Markets
* Projecting
* Public Debt
* Paper Money

Papers should explore how these financial innovations affected politics
and literature or vice versa. For the purposes of this colloquium, the
term literature is broadly defined to include newspapers, pamphlets,
treatises, novels, plays, and prints. Authors must write for a
non-specialist audience, striving to make insights from their own
discipline readily accessible to scholars from other disciplinary
traditions. Graduate students and emerging scholars are particularly
encouraged to contribute.

Papers addressing any of the following questions would be particularly
welcome (though authors should feel free to suggest other questions of
the same general kind):

* How did perceptions of public and private debt affect schemes for a
Bank of Ireland and do these perceptions sufficiently account for the
failure of those schemes?

* Why were so few of the new financial institutions and practices
emerging in England adopted in Ireland? Did public perceptions of the
problems with England's new system of public debt have any role to play
here?

* Did the rise of the Bank of Scotland and the associated financial
consequences have a noticeable impact on the country's politics and
literature?

* How seriously should we take contemporary literature complaining of
stock jobbing and various other forms of financial corruption in the
London stock market?

* Did the South Sea Bubble and public reaction to it significantly alter
the course of British discourse about public finance and politics?

* For whom was projecting literature written and to what purpose?

* Did literary, periodical, theatrical, or visual works have any
significant effect on British politics and public finance?

* Is there any substance to the claim of Swift and other contemporary
pamphleteers that the political influence of government financiers grew
significantly during this period, at the expense of the landed interest?

* Did the emergence of a long-term public debt alter the day-to-day
workings of British politics in any significant, verifiable way? And
were any changes correctly understood at the time?

* How effectively did the British government capture the savings made
possible by the growing use of paper money?

* In what context did Hume write his essay "Of Public Debt" and how
influential was it with contemporaries?

* What was the impact of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48)
upon England's public debt and how well was this influence understood in
contemporary pamphlet literature?

* How did the revolution in Britain's public finances alter its plans
for the colonies and how was this change of plans presented to the public?

Proposals should be submitted to Chris Fauske
(christopher.fauske_at_salemstate.edu), Rick Kleer
(richard.kleer_at_uregina.ca) or Ivar McGrath (charles.mcgrath_at_ucd.ie).
Proposals of 250 words are due 15 December 2005. The program will be
announced in February 2006. Accepted papers will be due on 1 May 2006
and will be circulated among colloquium participants in advance.

The colloquium is an initiative of Money, Power and Prose, a loose
association of scholars interested in an interdisciplinary approach to
the Financial Revolution. The association hosted a similar colloquium
at Regina, Saskatchewan in summer 2004. A selection of the papers
presented there should be available in book form later this year. The
goal is likewise to publish a selection of the papers presented at the
2006 Colloquium.

For further details on the colloquium and on Money, Power and Prose
please visit http://www.econ.uregina.ca/mpp/coll2006.

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Received on Wed Apr 06 2005 - 20:10:40 EDT