Political Economies of Capitalism, 1600-1850
About the Book Series
Series Editors: John Shovlin, Philip Stern (Duke University) and Carl Wennerlind (Barnard College, Columbia University)
This series seeks manuscripts exploring the many dimensions of early modern political economy, and especially the ways in which this period established both foundations for and alternatives to modern capitalist thought and practice. We welcome submissions that examine this history from a variety of perspectives—political, intellectual, cultural, economic, scientific, social, spatial, or others—and in contexts ranging from the local to the global. Potential themes include efforts to understand how natural philosophy and political economy were intertwined and how they shaped prevailing worldviews of both individual actors and states; the uneasy coexistence of liberty and coercion in labor, commodity, and financial markets; the tension between commercial activities, social virtues, and political stability; the interplay between commercial, military, and political power at home and overseas; the incongruity between ideal categories, such as free trade, and real world practices. While we will consider traditional monographs, our primary focus is on the publication of shorter interpretive and conceptual books (50-70,000 words). We believe that this format is ideal for the development of broad arguments and perspectives, providing authors with the opportunity to develop their ideas in a flexible and accessible format. We are also open to proposals for other forms of scholarship, both innovative and traditional, such as collaborative works, edited collections, and critical textual editions.
Authors interested in submitting a proposal, please feel free to contact any of the series editors.
Credit, Currency, and Capital: The Scottish Financial Revolution, 1690-1727
1st Edition
By Andrew McDiarmid
January 30, 2025
The years 1690–1727 represented a period of significant change for Scotland. It was a time of grand colonial endeavours and financial innovation, punctuated by bouts of economic turmoil and constitutional and political uncertainty. The infamous Darien Scheme, the establishment of the Bank of ...
Filippo Sassetti on Trade, Institutions and Empire
1st Edition
By Corey Tazzara
December 18, 2024
The Florentine traveler, merchant, and academician Filippo Sassetti was one of the premier economic thinkers of the late Renaissance. Well known for his ethnographic observations, Sassetti was also a commercial writer of the highest caliber—at once an original thinker and a remarkable witness to ...
Free Trade and Free Ports in the Mediterranean
1st Edition
Edited
By Giulia Delogu, Koen Stapelbroek, Antonio Trampus
July 12, 2024
How did free trade emerge in early-modern times? How did the Mediterranean as a specific region – with its own historical characteristics – produce a culture in which the free port appeared? What was the relation between the type of free trade created in early-modern Italy and the development of ...
Political Reason and the Language of Change: Reform and Improvement in Early Modern Europe
1st Edition
Edited
By Adriana Luna-Fabritius, Ere Nokkala, Marten Seppel, Keith Tribe
May 27, 2024
This collection of essays re-examines ideas of change and movements for change in early modern Europe without presuming that "progressive" change was the outcome of "reforms". "Reform" today implies rational, incremental change to public institutions and procedures. "Improvement" has a more ...
Misers: British Responses to Extreme Saving, 1700–1860
1st Edition
By Timothy Alborn
January 29, 2024
This volume uses the extreme case of misers to examine interlocking categories that undergirded the emergence of modern British society, including new perspectives on charity, morality, and marriage; new representations of passion and sympathy; and new modes of saving, spending, and investment. ...
Commercial Cosmopolitanism?: Cross-Cultural Objects, Spaces, and Institutions in the Early Modern World
1st Edition
Edited
By Felicia Gottmann
September 26, 2022
This book showcases the wide variety of commercial cosmopolitan practices that arose from the global economic entanglements of the early modern period. Cosmopolitanism is not only a philosophical ideal: for many centuries it has also been an everyday practice across the globe. The early modern era ...
Historicizing Self-Interest in the Modern Atlantic World: A Plea for Ego?
1st Edition
Edited
By Christine Zabel
September 26, 2022
This volume historicizes the use of the notion of self-interest that at least since Bernard de Mandeville and Adam Smith’s theories is considered a central component of economic theory. Having in the twentieth century become one of the key-features of rational choice models, and thus is seen as an ...