Trade, Debt, and International Order in the Age of Enlightenment

FAIN: FA-58605-15

John Shovlin
New York University (New York, NY 10012-1019)

Networks of public officials, financiers and intellectuals, based in Britain, France, and the Dutch Republic sought to channel eighteenth-century Franco-British rivalry into peaceful economic competition. I use a history of these networks to propose a new interpretation of the period's international history, one which places the problem of public debt at the center of international politics. The key impetus for pacification efforts came from the world of public finance, where officials, financiers and political economists concurred that the exploding public debts associated with the century's many wars were sapping the long term foundations of power. Peace was a safer path to hegemony. Finding existing explanatory paradigms wanting, I consider anew the relationship between capitalism and international order in the eighteenth century, and reveal an international realm with remarkable parallels to our own.

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Title: “Money and Geopolitics in the France of Cardinal Fleury: The Political Economy of Jean-Francois Melon"
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Date: 11/6/2015
Conference Name: Western Society for French History

“Free Trade and Commercial Imperialism: Forging an International Trade Regime (1697-1713" (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: “Free Trade and Commercial Imperialism: Forging an International Trade Regime (1697-1713"
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Trading with the Enemy: Britain, France, and the 18th-Century Quest for a Peaceful World Order (Book)
Title: Trading with the Enemy: Britain, France, and the 18th-Century Quest for a Peaceful World Order
Author: John Shovlin
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300253566/trading-with-the-enemy/
Primary URL Description: Publisher website
Publisher: Yale University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780300253566

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