CARL WENNERLIND. Casualties of Credit: The English Financial Revolution, 1620-1720.

Abstract

A politically correct postmodern effort to discredit the English financial revolution had to emerge sometime, and here it is. Rather than deal with the fundamental issues of finance, trade, and the fiscal and monetary policy that bedeviled successive regimes over the century from 1620 to 1720, Carl Wennerlind focuses on three successive episodes of “discourse regarding credit.” His choice of episodes and therefore of literature are disconcerting for an economic historian, although they may suggest additional avenues of research. In the first period, 1620–1660, Wennerlind highlights the writings of individuals around Samuel Hartlib, the so-called Hartlib Circle. Much of their correspondence dealt with various rumors of alchemists' attempts to create gold from base metals and thereby solve the existing shortage of money. Some of the Hartlibian documents suggested that paper money could be a viable substitute for the philosopher's stone so ardently sought by alchemists. Were the advocates of such substitutes perhaps charlatans on par with the alchemists? The interplay of innovations in war finance that occurred on the continent during the course of the Thirty Years' War, and those attempted by parliament during the Civil War and by Oliver Cromwell during the Protectorate, should receive more attention from economic historians, however. Perhaps the extensive correspondence of Hartlib with leading mercantilist and scientific thinkers throughout northern Europe could yield insights into the financial interactions that occurred if read for that purpose.