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SUMMARY:Science\, finance and empire: assessing the role of networked capi
 tal in Britain’s economic development\, 1660-1720 - Edmond Smith\, Unive
 rsity of Manchester
DTSTART:20240516T160000Z
DTEND:20240516T180000Z
UID:TALK213004@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Amy Erickson
DESCRIPTION:Over the past few years\, new research has changed how and whe
 n historians are identifying Britain’s “capitalist transformation”\,
  with studies of structural\, labour\, and institutional change putting th
 e seventeenth-century stage in our understanding of the topic. This paper 
 will contribute to that growing field of work by drawing on new evidence d
 eveloped during the ESRC-funded “Risky Business: Investing in Innovation
  and Britain’s Economic Development” project. Specifically\, it will a
 nalyse investment practices of over 11\,000 investors who helped fund and 
 direct economic activity across an array of sectors. As well as investment
  in the “big five” (the Bank of England\, East India Company - Old and
  United\, Royal African Company and South Sea Company)\, the data also inc
 ludes investment in a further twenty-nine organisations\, covering finance
 \, manufacturing\, trade\, mining\, and others. Additionally\, investors w
 ho were patented “inventors”\, members of learned societies\, and cont
 ributors to major charitable projects are also identified. By integrating 
 the analysis of investment in traditional capital markets with interest in
  a wider array of economic sectors and concurrent participation in scienti
 fic and innovative practice\, the paper sets out not to assess so much the
  financial decision making or portfolio development of specific investors\
 , but rather to use the networks that this generated as an explanatory too
 l for understanding the broader and entangled development of multiple sect
 ors. Firstly\, this analysis will demonstrate how Britain’s investors op
 erated in an environment whereby facilities crossing corporate\, state\, a
 nd individual networks were required to access investment opportunities\, 
 demanding institutional practices that facilitated interaction and engagem
 ent across a multiplicity of different social\, cultural\, and political n
 etworks. Secondly\, I will argue that within this analysis we can trace th
 e impact of what I will call “networked capital”: the mutually reinfor
 cing combination and exploitation of financial\, natural\, physical\, huma
 n\, and social capital across different businesses and sectors that was a 
 central and defining feature of Britain’s economic transformation.
LOCATION:History Faculty Room 11
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