Call for Papers 
Money, Power and Prose: Interdisciplinary Studies of the Financial 
Revolution in the British Isles, 1688-1756 
8-10 June 2006 
Armagh, Northern Ireland 
 
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 
([log in to unmask]), Rick Kleer ([log in to unmask]) 
or Ivar McGrath ([log in to unmask]). 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.