Gambling captures as nothing else the drama of the “long
eighteenth century” between the age of religious wars and the age
of revolutions. The society that was confronted with games of
chance pursued as commercial ventures also came to grips with
unprecedented social mobility, floated by new wealth from new
sources created fortunes from trade in sugar, cotton, ivory, silk,
tea, or enslaved human beings. Likewise, play for money was
prominent in the public imagination as money itself, deployed
through an ever expanding and ever more sophisticated range of
mechanisms, increasingly invaded public awareness, as when
prospective spouses in period fiction were rated in terms of annual
income as if they were municipal bonds. Similarly, the archetypal
figure of the gambler captured the imagination of the public in
fiction, media, and politics. At the same time, new interest in
science, technology, engineering, and mathematics - encouraged and
bankrolled by those in power - fostered a new and unprecedented
appreciation for mathematical probability and its applications,
opening the possibility that games of chance might be pursued as a
profitable commercial venture. The Gambling Century focuses like no
previous work on those who enabled, facilitated, and profited from
gambling, as well as on efforts to regulate or outlaw it. Using
extensive archival material as well as printed sources, it follows
its subjects from the Court to the coffeehouse, to private clubs
and “at homes” in townhouses, all of which prefigure that
quintessentially modern gambling space, the casino.
General
| Imprint: |
Oxford UniversityPress
|
| Country of origin: |
United Kingdom |
| Release date: |
October 2023 |
| Authors: |
John Eglin
(Professor of History)
|
| Dimensions: |
234 x 153mm (L x W) |
| Pages: |
272 |
| ISBN-13: |
978-0-19-288819-8 |
| Categories: |
Books
Promotions
|
| LSN: |
0-19-288819-6 |
| Barcode: |
9780192888198 |
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