“A Just and Profitable Commerce”: Moral Economy and the Middle Classes in Eighteenth-Century London

1993 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 305-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan E. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Ongoing Research ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Market Relations ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City ◽  
Fundamental Reference

It has been twenty years since E. P. Thompson introduced the term “moral economy” into the historian's vocabulary. Since then it has exerted a paradigmatic force in explanations of the motivations for, and responses to, various forms of popular action. Pitted against this has been the notion of political economy, most often presented as a subsequent (and eventually triumphant) ideological development that was necessarily antithetical to a moral economy. Together these two models have served as fundamental reference points around which accounts of popular protest and public policy have been constructed. Recent explorations into past assumptions regarding the proper functioning of the marketplace have served to open this conventional schematization to debate. Thompson himself has once again entered the fray with a further refinement and restatement of his original arguments and a spirited riposte to his critics. The purpose of the following essay is to focus and further develop this debate in light of the author's ongoing research into the City of London in the late eighteenth century.In seeking to loosen the constructs through which past economic relations and ideologies have been characterized, this essay will concentrate on two main areas of enquiry. The first follows the work of other historians in attempting to probe more deeply into the diverse and often conflicting understandings of the marketplace articulated in this period, thus revealing alternate possibilities in the interstices of moral economy and political economy. The second as yet remains relatively unexplored and concerns a series of assumptions as to who might be expected to advocate these various conceptions of market relations and why.

1649: Revolutionary Turnpike

2020 ◽  
pp. 300-308
Author(s):  
Jonathan Scott
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
American Frontier ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
Relative Decline ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City ◽  
And Diffusion ◽  
Dramatic Growth

This concluding chapter discusses how the Anglo-Dutch revolution of 1649–1702 stood at the centre of a succession of wider transformations which were agricultural, political, and commercial. All of these had their origins in the Netherlands before spreading to south-eastern England and across the Atlantic. Understanding their development and diffusion has required attention to religion, migration, and war as well as to economic, social, and cultural life. The result connected a series of unique local human environments, including the Dutch water world, the city of London, and the American frontier into a world-altering imperial system. By the later eighteenth century the Atlantic reorientation of the European economy had thrown the Baltic into relative decline, sparking the dramatic growth of Liverpool, Manchester, and Glasgow while Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam stagnated.

The Catholic London District in the Eighteenth Century

2006 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-268
Author(s):  
David Butler
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
Social Segregation ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City ◽  
Drury Lane

The London of Challoner consisted only of some seven square miles, one square mile of which was, of course, the City of London. It can all be put onto some eight pages of the present A–Z map of London, which at the time of writing consists of 141 pages. John Rocques's map of London, on a scale of 200 feet to the inch, which he began in 1738 and finished in 1747, in its London Topographical Society format of 1982, perfectly illustrates the London of both Challoner and Defoe. The western extremities were at Marylebone, Knightsbridge and Chelsea, the eastern at Stepney, Limehouse and Deptford, the northern at Tottenham Court and Bethnal Green, while the southern limits were at Kennington and Walworth Common. The population of London was assessed by Wrigley in 1990 as c. 575,000 in 1700, as c. 675,000 in 1750 and as c. 959,000 in 1801. The 1767 papist returns indicated that most London Catholics lived in the parishes of St James and St Giles, within Westminster. Schwarz has pointed out the considerable social segregation in London, middle-class areas being in the west and central parts, with the poorer areas in the south and east. The St Giles area around Seven Dials going east to Bow Street and Drury Lane is reputed to have contained a third of the capital's beggars and to have been a notoriously criminal quarter. The Catholic numbers in Westminster were 7,724, the City numbers 1,492, with the Middlesex out-parishes having more than 2,000. The 1767 total for London, including the parishes to the south and east, comes to 12,320, clearly too low, as is the accumulated total for the London District of around 15,800. This gives about 3,500 for the London District outside the capital while Challoner's own figures give us a Catholic population of 5,261. If the errors in enumeration were the same in both areas (a large assumption), this enables us to guess that the 1767 figures could be corrected to about 18,500 London Catholics and about 24,000 for the whole District.

Brexit and the Future UK–EU Relationship

2020 ◽  
pp. 150-178
Author(s):  
Scott James ◽  
Lucia Quaglia
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Financial Services ◽  
Financial Regulation ◽  
Mutual Recognition ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Single Market ◽  
Elected Officials ◽  
The Future ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

This chapter uses the domestic political economy framework to consider the implications of Brexit for UK financial regulation. It outlines the likely future UK–EU relationship by analysing the preferences, role, and influence of key domestic groups on Brexit, and by assessing the EU’s framework for managing relations with third countries. We argue that elected officials pursued a ‘hard’ Brexit position in response to parliamentary constraints and pressure from financial regulators to avoid becoming rule-takers. The City of London authorities pushed strongly for a bespoke deal based on mutual recognition, although this masked significant intra-industry divisions. The EU’s insistence that the future relationship be based on the existing third-country regime reflected a desire to defend the single market, but also Franco-German incentives to compete for post-Brexit business. However, the coverage of third-country equivalence rules in finance, and the inclusion of financial services in trade agreements, remains limited.

The City of London and the Controversy over Immigration, 1660–1722

1990 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Statt
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
To Come ◽  
Charles Ii ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City ◽  
Legal Sense

From the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 to the middle of the eighteenth century a protracted controversy took place over whether foreigners ought to be encouraged to come to settle in England. The debate was usually couched in terms of whether aliens should be offered naturalization in England. The word naturalize was sometimes used not in a technical legal sense, but in the first sense given in Johnson's Dictionary: ‘to adopt into a community’. In its stricter sense, the question was whether a cheap and convenient way should be offered to immigrants to acquire the rights of native-born English subjects. It was thought by both its advocates and its enemies that such an offer, by means of an act of general naturalization, would encourage a large influx of foreign protestants. The issue was debated repeatedly in parliament. Over a dozen attempts were made to pass an act for a general naturalization between the Restoration and the final passage of such an act in 1709. The act of 1709 was repealed only three years after its passage, but several more bills for a similar statute were introduced towards the middle of the century. The naturalization controversy is more easily followed, however, in the pages of the tracts, pamphlets, treatises, and broadsides, both in favour of and in opposition to a general naturalization, that tumbled from the presses throughout the period, and most profusely in the 1680s, 1690s, and 1700s. The debate aroused the interest especially of the growing ranks of those who, after the Restoration, interested themselves in trade matters.

The British Agency Houses in Malaysia: Survival in a Changing World

1981 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. H. Drabble ◽  
P. J. Drake
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Growth ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Trade Routes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Worldwide Network ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City ◽  
India And China

One of the most interesting features of the growth of Britain's overseas commerce over the past two centuries has been the merchant firm, often the product of very small-scale beginnings but gradually developing into a worldwide network centring on London. The scope for such enterprises grew as effective naval control increased the security of the maritime trade routes and the importance of the great chartered companies declined. Much of the early growth came from the “country trade” between India and China in which private merchants were permitted to engage. In the late eighteenth century, commercial firms in the City of London began to open branches in India to deal in local products such as indigo, cotton and, later, opium. By the early nineteenth century, around two dozen of these “agency houses” were in existence though the majority were very small and short-lived. 1 In the same period, the more substantial firms were establishing further offshoots in Canton to participate in the tea and silk trade in Europe.

‘The Rector presents his compliments’: Worship, Fabric, and Furnishings of the Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield, 1828-1938

1999 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 320-332
Author(s):  
Martin Dudley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Benjamin Franklin ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
John Wesley ◽  
Process Of Change ◽  
Parish Church ◽  
The North ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

For nearly 900 years the Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great has functioned as an expression of wider religious moods, movements, and aspirations. Founded in 1123 by Rahere, a courtier of Henry I, at a time when the Augustinian Canons gained a brief ascendancy over older forms of religious life, it represents the last flowering of English Romanesque architecture. The Priory was dissolved by Henry VIII, became a house of Dominicans under Mary, and saw the flames that consumed the Smithfield martyrs. Since Elizabeth’s reign it has been a parish church serving a small and poor but populous area within the City of London but outside the walls. Its history is fairly well documented. Richard Rich lived in the former Lady Chapel. Walter Mildmay worshipped, and was buried, there. John Wesley preached there. Hogarth was baptized there. Parts of the church had been turned over to secular use. There was a blacksmith’s forge in the north transept beyond the bricked-up arch of the crossing and the smoke from the forge often filled the building. A school occupied the north triforium gallery. The Lady Chapel was further divided, and early in the eighteenth century Samuel Palmer, a printer, had his letter foundry there. The young Benjamin Franklin worked there for a year in 172 s and recorded the experience in his autobiography. The church, surrounded by houses, taverns, schools, chapels, stables, and warehouses, was a shadow of its medieval glory; but between 1828 and 1897 it changed internally and externally almost beyond recognition. The process of change continued over the next forty years and indeed continues still. These changes in architecture and furnishings were closely linked to a changed attitude to medieval buildings, to issues of churchmanship, and to liturgical developments.

The City of London in the Eighteenth Century

2019 ◽  
pp. 101-118
Author(s):  
Ian Doolittle
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Property Income ◽  
Systemic Problems ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

The City of London and its Livery Companies were subject to various corporate pressures in the eighteenth century. Systemic problems with debt, property income, membership, and office-holding shaped their behaviour. Appreciating these problems helps us better understand a number of important issues. The apparent revival of guild controls should be seen in a financial as well as a trading context. The efforts to force wealthy Dissenters to serve as Sheriffs were not vindictive; it was simply that service was a requirement imposed on all members of the City Corporation. The unwillingness and/or inability to deal with what was later called corruption can be attributed to these corporate constraints. The City’s timid approach to ‘local government’ (including public improvements) is explicable in similar terms. And its politics were often driven by inward-looking—i.e. corporate—concerns rather than party-political ones.

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