The Politics of Economic Distress in the Aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, 1689–1702

Abstract

Abstract The economic problems of the 1690s spurred an extraordinary surge in politicised debates and complaints about commercial, financial and other material affairs. This article begins by examining the magnitude of the shift that occurred in economic fortunes between the reigns of James II (1685–8) and William III (1689–1702), highlighting the main sources of concern: wartime disruption to trade, rising taxes, the currency crisis associated with the recoinage of 1696, and the high food prices of 1693–9. More significantly, it then assesses the nature and extent of the public response. Trade, finance and fiscal impositions became increasingly pervasive topics of public conversation and printed debate, as evidenced both by anecdotal reports and an approximate but telling analysis of published titles. Moreover, national political divisions—between Williamites and Jacobites, Whigs and Tories, Court and Country, anti-French and anti-Dutch—were central to this economic discourse. Perceptions of the monarch and parliamentary leaders were directly linked to how people interpreted the hardships of this decade. This manifested itself in innumerable short tracts, broadside ballads, seditious conversations, riotous protests and many other modes of public communication. Finally, through comparisons with earlier and later periods such as the 1540s, 1590s, 1640s and the early eighteenth century, this article demonstrates that the tumult of the 1690s had a long-term impact and has been unjustly neglected in the historiography of economic crisis and political conflict.