1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910746094703321

Titolo

The Bubble Act : new perspectives from passage to repeal and beyond / / edited by Helen Paul, Nicholas Di Liberto, D`Maris Coffman

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2023

ISBN

3-031-31894-3

Edizione

[1st ed. 2023.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (368 pages) : illustrations (black and white)

Collana

Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance, , 2662-5172

Altri autori (Persone)

PaulHelen

Di LibertoNicholas

CoffmanD`Maris

Disciplina

332.0941

Soggetti

Articles of incorporation - History

Economic history

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Introduction -- The Bubble Act and the First Corporate Economy -- ‘Mr Morice is said to appear at the head’: The Bubble Act and an Aborted Joint-Stock Slave-Trading Company -- ‘That ever-memorable year of epidemical infatuation’: Incorporation, the Jamaica Mines Company, and the Bubble Act of 1720 -- Pamphlet Poetry and the South Sea Bubble -- Decoding the Bubble: Popular Magic, Financial Deception, and Eliza Haywood’s Memoirs of a Certain Island Adjacent to Utopia -- Consequences Unintended: The Bubble Act and American Independence -- Capitalism by Generalists: The Governance of the Ayr Bank and the Emergence of Professionalism in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Scottish Banking -- Royal Charters, Royal Power, and the Business of Empire -- Babbage’s Age of Speculation: Calculating the Value of Life After the Repeal of the Bubble Act -- The Repeal of the Bubble Act and the Debate Between the Currency School and the Banking School -- Agency Houses in Bengal and the Indigo Bubble -- Epilogue.

Sommario/riassunto

This book reassesses the actual effects of the Bubble Act, still popularly associated with the bursting of the South Sea Bubble. The book builds on the foundational work of Ron Harris to discuss the act’s effect on corporate governance, literary culture, colonial law, and the Industrial Revolution. The Bubble Act was deemed an empty letter within England



itself as it was rarely used in legal proceedings. Several chapters consider whether this was the case outside England, from Scotland to the Americas, India, and Africa. Others assess the impact of the act, both on literary culture and in the history of economic thought. The act has been conceptualized as a brake on economic development or of little consequence. This edited collection offers a timely reassessment of the Bubble Act and its legacy.