This book brings together for the first time more than half a dozen proposals for an imperial paper currency in the mid-eighteenth century British Atlantic, to show how manage colonial currency and banking in the expanding empire.  Existing studies have looked at the successes and failures of schemes in individual colonies.  But some had grander ambitions, such as Benjamin Franklin, and offered proposals for ‘imperial’ or ‘continental’ paper currencies and monetary unions which would help knit together colonial territories throughout North...

This book reassesses the actual effects of the Bubble Act, still popularly associated with the bursting of the South Sea Bubble. The book builds on the foundational work of Ron Harris to discuss the act’s effect on corporate governance, literary culture, colonial law, and the Industrial Revolution. The Bubble Act was deemed an empty letter within England itself as it was rarely used in legal proceedings. Several chapters consider whether this was the case outside England, from Scotland to the Americas, India, and Africa. Others assess the impact of the act, both on literary culture and...