Money, Credit, and Financial Crisis, 1600-1850

Examines the role of money and credit in the “boom and bust” dynamic that has characterized North Atlantic financial capitalism since its emergence in the late 17th century. Studies the late 17th to the early 19th centuries when the North Atlantic economies (France, Britain, the Netherlands, and their colonial dependencies) developed modern, capitalist institutions and practices of money, credit, and finance. Studies the creation of state banks, stock markets, the relationship between war and finance, and the transition from metallic to paper currency. Explores the explosive politics of speculation, banking, and paper money in the Atlantic revolutionary era and the interdependence of plantation slavery and credit markets in the antebellum period. While 21H.985 and 21H.986 are sequential, students have the option of taking either or both.