ANNEL. MURPHY. The Origins of English Financial Markets: Investment and Speculation before the South Sea Bubble. (Cambridge Studies in Economic History.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 2009. Pp. xiii, 283. $99.00

Abstract

Many kinds of scholars have been interested in the origins of London's financial markets: historians, economists, political scientists, and sociologists. Approaching the topic from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, a steady if not voluminous stream of publications has followed P. G. M. Dickson's magisterial book The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit, 1688–1756 (1967). Anne L. Murphy now adds a valuable contribution to this literature, building on earlier work, refining older arguments, and clarifying previous claims. In journalistic renderings, the South Sea Bubble of 1720 provides the conventional starting point for the London stock market. For those following the well‐known interpretation of Douglass C. North and Barry R. Weingast, things really began with the political changes associated with the Glorious Revolution. Murphy moves the starting point even further back, tracing various markers of market activity beginning in the 1670s. Consistent with this shift, Murphy...