Few financial crises, historically speaking, have attracted such attention as the Mississippi and South Sea Bubbles of 1719-20. The twin bubbles had major economic and political implications, sending shock waves through the whole of Europe; they astonished contemporaries, and, to a large extent, they still resonate today. This volume offers new readings of these events, drawing on fresh research and new evidence that challenge traditional interpretations. The chapters engage, in particular, with: the geographical frame of the 1719-20 bubbles their social, cultural, economic and political impact the ways in which contemporaries understood speculation the contributions and impact of a diverse array of participants popular and print memorialization of the events Overall, the volume helps to rewrite the history of the 1719-20 bubbles and to recontextualize their place within eighteenth-century history.

This critically-commented source edition contains the commercial directions, merchant diary and naval log of four East India Company ships, which sailed from London to Canton, China in 1723, as well as the travelogue of another contemporary trader who sailed from Ostend. It highlights the roles of cooperation and competition in shaping the relations between these and other European companies as well as the everyday lives of European merchants and mariners. The edition thus sheds new light on the history of the East Indies trade during the eighteenth century and its role in encouraging early modern globalization.

Daniel Menning examines how nobility defined itself as a social group after the dissolution of estate based society. He reveals continuities in the self concept of the nobility along with efforts for reform. Not least, new strategies were needed for holding onto control of family estates in the new republican environment. Menning has researched extensive aristocratic archives and collected data from family associations and family foundations."