Manchester University Press Commerce, Finance and Statecraft: Histories of England, 1600–1780

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.