Commerce, finance and statecraft : histories of England, 1600-1780 / / Ben Dew.

• VerfasserIn: Dew, Benjamin, 1978-
• TeilnehmendeR: Manchester University Press,
• Place / Publishing House: Manchester, UK : : Manchester University Press,, 2018.; Manchester, UK : : Manchester University Press,, [2020]; ©2018
• Year of Publication: 2020; 2018
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource ( viii, 278 pages) :; illustrations; digital file(s).

Commerce, finance and statecraft charts the emergence of new approaches to England's economic history in the historical writing of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The book explores the work of the period's most influential historians ­– among them Francis Bacon, William Camden, Paul de Rapin-Thoyras and David Hume – and shows how these writers, and their contemporaries, were engaged in a series of hotly contested, politically–charged debates concerning the management of England's commercial and financial interests. This book will be essential reading for historians and literary critics working on Restoration and eighteenth-century historical writing, and historians, economists, political scientists, and philosophers interested in historiographical theory.

"In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, historians of England pioneered a series of new approaches to the history of economic policy. Commerce, finance and statecraft charts the development of these forms of writing and explores the role they played in the period's economic, political and historical thought. In doing so, it makes a significant intervention in the study of historiography, and provides an original account of early modern and Enlightenment historical writing. A broad selection of historical literature is discussed. This ranges from the work of Francis Bacon and William Camden in the Jacobean era, through a series of accounts shaped by the English Civil War and the party-political conflicts that followed it, to the eighteenth-century's major account of British history: David Hume's History of England. Particular attention is paid to the historiographical context in which historians worked and the various ways they copied, adapted and contested one another's narratives. The study demonstrates that historical writing was the site of a wide-ranging, politically charged debate concerning the relationship which existed – and should have existed – between government and commerce at various moments in England’s past. The book will be essential reading for historians and literary critics working on the history of historical writing, and historians, economists, political scientists and philosophers interested in historiographical theory." -- Back cover.

Table of Contents

Introduction -- 1. Tacitean history: Francis Bacon's --History of the Reign of King Henry VII -- 2. Exemplary history: William Camden's Annales -- 3. Chronology and commerce: Edmund Howes' --Annales -- 4. The English Civil War and the politics of economic statecraft -- 5. Whig history: Paul de Thoyras de Rapin's Histoire -- 6. Tory history: Thomas Salmon's Modern History -- 7. Jacobite history: Thomas Carte's General History -- 8. Economic statecraft and economic progress: William Guthrie's General History -- 9. The end of economic statecraft: David Hume's History of England -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.