Walpole In The South Sea Bubble

In addition, Rediker builds upon such economic themes in another of his works, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750. This monograph details the seamen’s personal experiences in order to highlight the larger historical themes at hand, including the rise of capitalism, the creation of free labor, and the growth of an international working class.

During the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries, piracy was rampant in the Atlantic, specifically in the West Indies. Piracy has existed since the earliest days of ocean travel, for a range of personal and economic reasons. However, one of the major reasons why piracy was wide spread and rampant in the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries was Great Britain’s endorsement and usage of piracy as an asset; in wars fought in the New World. Great Britain with its expanding power and conflicts with other nations would make piracy a lifestyle and lay down the foundation for the Golden Age of Piracy and eventually bring what it created to a screeching halt.

On 2 April 1982, the British political system was rocked by news of an extraordinary event eight thousand miles away in the South Atlantic. A long-standing and thorny dispute with Argentina over sovereignty of the Falkland Islands – a tiny relic of empire proximate to the South American mainland – had erupted with a sudden and unprovoked invasion of British territory by Argentine forces. Britain’s Conservative government faced the greatest crisis in foreign affairs for a generation (Freedman, 1988). Behind this audacious Argentine manoeuvre laid the assumption that the British Government – struggling with union strife, plunging

1. At the end of eighteenth and start of nineteenth centuries, the Atlantic World was transformed by a series of revolutions on both sides of the Atlantic. What were they? How were they related? How were they the same? How were they different?

Villains of All Nations, by Marcus Rediker, is a collection of ideas and information about pirates in the Golden Age of Atlantic piracy, between the years 1650 and 1730. This book is a collection of the unprecedented social and cultural history of pirates, mainly at sea, but also before they became pirates, and how piracy affected maritime culture. It delves into the ideas and realities of pirate life and helps further an understanding of piracy during this time. Rediker claims, “The pirates of the 1710s and 1720s were among the greatest ever in the long history of robbery by sea” (Rediker 8). The text explores the Golden Age of piracy and the generation that shaped the modern, romanticized view of pirates.

The collection of documents creates an image of scarcity riots happening across the South west of England during the period of spring 1801. At same time England was facing economic hardship because of constant high taxation as a result of the war with France. The country was in the midst of crop shortages caused by the poor harvest in the previous year of 1799. The current years were also being shaped by the ideas of Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith’s ‘Wealth of Nations’ which pushed ideas of free trade. These ideas were meant to cause market contention resulting in market prices naturally decreasing, but due to the current economic situation of low wages and shortages prices continued to be high. Which is why there was social unrest surrounding the market place, with the last scarcity riot only being 4 years prior. The south ranging from Plymouth in Devon through Somerset into Bristol was especially hard hit, due to its low prices at the start of the period. Following Adam Smith’s theory many farmers were willing to venture further to achieve higher prices in different markets. This meant the South was relying solely on its own supplies, meaning great demand and little supply. It is this South dominated documentation that helps paint a picture of the dynamics that developed between the market, mob and magistrate. It shows the crowds action verse the magistrates reaction, and whether these varied from town to town. These primary sources can also be used to challenge or

After all Peel had learnt the majority of his trade under Lord Liverpool, a politician who always regarded the 1815 Corn Law as a temporary measure. ‘The fundamental attitudes he revealed at the time were the product of his entire political experience’. However Peel’s backbenchers did not support the similar view on Repeal as he did and the feelings of anger among them were only natural as Peel was making his disregard for them blatantly obvious and when two thirds of the party voted against Peel on the issue of repeal this was the culmination of at least 5 years of inadequate party management by the Prime Minister. Eric Evans opposes Gash’s opinion by stating ‘Despite Gash’s views about Peel’s leadership, it might be contended that he deserved exactly what he got from his back benchers in 1846.’ Nevertheless, the Corn Law repeal crisis does not take away the fact that Peel was without a shadow of a doubt the greatest figure in British politics during the first half of the 19th Century. Peel was one of the very few Prime Ministers who weren’t simply reacting to the industrial revolution but he was shaping its future course all

Pirates were not the repulsive scum that is often seen in modern pop culture, neither were they the romanticized outlaws that wandered the seas. Most pirates set out of their illegal harbors with a goal in mind and strive to achieve their goals, while abiding to rules set and regulated by their brethren. The war on pirates was bloody and violent and the victims of piracy numbered in the thousands with casualties almost just as high, however, most pirates in the 1700s were not looting and killing for sport, rather, they were acting out of the direction of their sovereign. To prove their ethical innocence, one must look into the differences between the types of pirates, the reasoning behind pirate raid, and consequences of such raids. First

Also supported by Carretta, he writes “These were all important parts of a book that appeared in 1789; the year in which the British parliament first seriously debated abolishing the slave trade-and, indeed, we can see The Interesting Narrative as a central document of that debate” (229-230).

The accelerating pace of financial innovation, the pressures of international trading rivalry and European war, and the lop-sided relationship between the kingdoms of England and Scotland all presented Paterson with opportunities for projecting and self-promotion. Williams successful

This essay deals with the three shortages of masts and timber in the 1770s, 1803, and 1808, and considers how the navy dealt with these shortages. In the War of American Independence and the Napoleonic Wars, the Royal Navy often faced the risk of the shortages of these goods. In the second half of the eighteenth century, Britain gained the maritime supremacy in the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, and constructed many ships both for the navy and for the merchants. However, as Britain could not produce the sufficient quantity of naval stores in her own country, Britain depended on the import of naval stores from several areas. Masts from Norway, Russia, and New England, pitch and tar from Carolina, iron from Sweden, and hemp from Russia greatly contributed to British naval power in the long eighteenth century. The dependant position

On the other hand, the argument of Liberal agency must be taken into account as it explains how the Party’s mistakes led it to its ultimate demise. After all, it was the Liberals who provided the Labour Representation Committee its first foothold in politics by creating the ‘Progressive Alliance’ in 1906. The Alliance benefitted the Labour Party more than it did the Liberals, proving that the Liberal Party practically ‘dug its own grave’ by introducing Labour into the political arena. Furthermore, Liberal mistakes that occurred during the War, such as the infamous ‘shell scandal’ of 1915, indicated to many that the Liberals were incompetent to govern the country. The resignation of the First Sea Lord Jackie Fisher also seemed to emphasise the

This government policy was composed of extensive government regulation of international trade to ensure that these gains accrued to one’s own country, a pursuit that even carried European states into military conflict with one another. The emerging trade between Europe and other regions of the world during the mercantilist period was undertaken chiefly by state-chartered monopoly trading companies and was therefore conducted under conditions of imperfect competition. Therefore, one could spot a rise in monopoly profits due to the imperfect competition. By contrast, Intra-European trade was less hindered by government monopoly policies and was actually fairly well established and competitive in the seventeenth century (Braudel, 1983). Selective monopolies were protected by the state in order to sustain certain industries. It became apparent that virtually all trade activities were embedded with state regulations. This enabled monarchs, merchants, government officials and their companies to benefit most out of the mercantilist activities while the working class was subjected to the lowest wage possible. There were many protectionist measures taken by the government, such as guild rules, taxes, tariffs, quotas, and prohibition of imports to big state-run

The South Sea Company, started in 1711, indirectly caused quite a ruckus among countless British investors, creating one of the earliest modern economic crises in our history. It all began as the South Sea Company, a British international trading company, monopolized the trade trade between Spain’s colonies in South America and the West Indies. Many investors soon began to realize the potential within the company as the colonies were filled with precious resources such as gold and silver. In order to determine the extent of the effects that the South Sea Bubble had on society, we must examine the social, political, and economic aspects within the catastrophe. The magnitude of the situation was quite immense as it’s effects had a severe impact on the British investors and the economic outlook towards investment. Thus, the South Sea Bubble represents an economic crisis that changed the British perception of pursuing and encouraging investment.

Stern, Philip J. “British Asia and British Atlantic: Comparisons and Connections.” The William and Mary Quarterly vol.63 no.4 (2006) 693-712. Philip J. Stern (an assistant professor of history at American University) discusses the similarities and connections between British Asia and British Atlantic in “British Asia and British Atlantic: Comparisons and Connections.” Stern hopes to prove in his article that historians’ tendency to highlight the distinctions between the Atlantic and Asia has facilitated inaccurate and incomplete accounts of early modern Britons’ overseas experience.