Description
Book SynopsisIn the seventeenth century, English economic theorists lost interest in the moral status of exchange and became increasingly concerned with the roots of national prosperity. Emily Erikson brings together historical, comparative, and computational methods to explain the institutional forces that brought about this transformation.
Trade ReviewIn
Trade and Nation, Emily Erikson traces the rise of economic nationalism to efforts by seventeenth-century British merchants to sway the Crown with tracts on the nation and prosperity. An outstanding historical sociologist as well as a computational scientist, Erikson presents a fresh, compelling perspective on mercantilism and the foundations of modern economic thought. -- Frank Dobbin, author of
Inventing Equal OpportunityIn our age of egregious inequality, why is economic policy devoted to national aggregate growth that increasingly channels wealth and income upward while trivializing distributional equity as irrelevant to economic efficiency? In this remarkable study Emily Erikson points not to modern Reaganomics but to the invention of a radical new economic doctrine by corporate merchants in sixteenth- through eighteenth-century England. Mixing sophisticated computational methods with deep historical archival research, Erikson demonstrates how a mutually advantageous 'courtship' between commerce and the Crown, one marked by an explosion of literary discourse in the newly emerging public sphere, triggered a novel justificatory framework focused on the exigencies of national prosperity over and against the long-prevailing 'moral economy' of economic justice.
Trade and Nation is a book of uncommon brilliance as well as an utterly necessary one for understanding the entrenched roots of today’s uncommon meanness. -- Margaret R. Somers, author of
Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness, and the Right to Have RightsTrade and Nation bridges the divide between social science and history, asking why modern western economic theory first developed in England rather than elsewhere. Emily Erikson uses a methodologically innovative approach, deploying data and computational methods to link discourse and authorship to institutional politics and positionality. -- Phil Withington, author of
Society in Early Modern England: The Vernacular Origins of Some Powerful IdeasA fascinating romp through the history of economics in Early Modern England. If you like money, history, and/or a combination of the two, you should pick it up. * East India Blogging Co. *
[A] lucidly written and thoughtfully conceived book. * Journal of the History of Economic Thought *
Erikson’s book is a major contribution to the field concerned with the evolution of economic thought in the early modern period. Erikson’s analysis, based on a methodology originating from sociology, is a cutting edge addition to economic history literature. * International Journal of Maritime History *
A pleasant and very solid read, showing how a wide range of statistical methods can be very elegantly articulated. Such an approach based on transparency regarding data-collection, exploitation, and results interpretation should be praised. * Journal of Social Structure *
[A] tour de force....This fantastic book will join and enliven recent work on what might be called the practical politics of economic thought. * American Journal of Sociology *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Declining Importance of Fair Exchange
2. Transformative Debates
3. Key Actors, Institutions, and Relations
4. Authors and Their Networks
5. Representation, Companies, and Publications
6. Why Not the Dutch?
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
