The Pleasure of Business and the Business of Pleasure: Gender, Credit, and the South Sea Bubble

Ingrassia, Catherine

doi:10.1353/sec.2010.0319

Cited by 13 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Some viewed men investing in the stock market as violating the masculine ideal of a husband and father providing for his family through landed wealth or stable, honest employment: financial investments were uncertain at best, based on false promises and imaginary wealth. 151 Male investors were often portrayed as seduced by their desire for riches as if by a beautiful woman, "too apt to fix their Love and Delight" on buying stocks. 152 To some observers, such behavior, like women consuming and wearing calico, threatened the traditional pillars of British society.…”

Section: Popular Fears Connecting the Calico Crisis And The South Sea...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Calico Madams and South Sea Cheats: Global Trade, Finance, and Popular Protest in Early Hanoverian England

Swingen

2024

J. Br. Stud.

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In the summer of 1719, woolen and silk weavers took to the streets in cities and towns across England to protest the East India Company's importation of cotton calicoes from South Asia. English weavers viewed these popular imports as hurting their economic livelihoods. During the protests, they violently turned their anger against women wearing calico, tearing off their clothes and even throwing acid on some victims. Their actions spurred widespread condemnation, but the weavers got what they wanted in the end. In March 1721, an act banning the importation and use of all calico cloth in Britain received royal assent. On that same day, an act arranging the first in a series of financial rescues of the South Sea Company in the wake of the South Sea Bubble became law. Drawing from a range of archival and printed sources, the author explores the political and cultural connections between the calico crisis and the South Sea Bubble and investigates how reactions to both episodes intersected ideologically with fears of Jacobitism and foreign invasion and with broader anxieties about gender, the social order, and the political influence of financial corporations.

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Section: Popular Fears Connecting the Calico Crisis And The South Sea...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Calico Madams and South Sea Cheats: Global Trade, Finance, and Popular Protest in Early Hanoverian England

Swingen

2024

J. Br. Stud.

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“…Og, hvordan kan man nu stole på andres vaerdidom, når den i bedste fald er baseret på mening, i vaerste på bedrag? Mit argument vil vaere, at ganske ligesom Daniel Defoe -der skrev, at kreditvaesenet var "founded in Fraud, born of Deceit, and nourished in Trick, Cheat, Wheedle" (citeret fra Fraser 2005, 11) -i en tekst om 'Lady Credit' bruger kvindefiguren som en måde at tematisere uforudsigelighed og kreditvaesenet på (Defoe 2005; om Defoes figur se Ingrassia 1995;Sherman 1996;de Goede 2005, kap. 2;Ingram 2006), så bruger Swift i Gullivers rejser satiren til at indfange det, der undslipper sig en direkte sprogliggørelse gennem en politisk kritik, nemlig at det vaerdifulde nu afhaenger af noget så omskifteligt som folks meninger og følelser og ikke mindst af folks forestillinger om andre mennesker.…”

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Troværdighedsbobler. Penge, fantasi og virkelighed i Jonathan Swifts "Gullivers rejser"

Thorup¹

2014

Passage

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Mikkel Thorup: “Credibility Bubbles. Money, Fantasy and Reality in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels”This article explores the interrelations between credit and credibility in Jonathan Swift’s well-known satire Gulliver’s Travels. Starting from a sketch of the monetary and financial innovations and developments of the period, most notably the emerging credit market and the collapse of the South Sea Bubble, the article reads Swift as a commentary on the ways in which economic value is increasingly disconnected from material or use references in favor of opinions, fantasies and imaginaries. To be creditworthy, in both the markets of Swift’s time and in his book, is tightly connected to speech, to reassurances of credibility. Credit and credibility are interlocked and the article explores how that interlocking plays out satirically.

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“…In 1720 the woolen and silk interests' attacks on women got an unexpected boost when critics of the frenzy over the South Sea Bubble, the bursting of which had cost countless fortunes in England, also blamed women and effeminate men. 60 In this context Daniel Defoe, chosen to lead the London weavers' defense in print, argued that A Merchant made a "Demand of exorbitant Liberty." 61 Fathers, husbands, and the government needed to work together to constrain women's consumer freedom and "Force" them to wear woolens for the good of the kingdom.…”

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confidence: 99%

Making an Imperial Compromise: The Calico Acts, the Atlantic Colonies, and the Structure of the British Empire

Eacott¹

2012

The William and Mary Quarterly

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1697 a mob of woolen and silk weavers stormed the East India Company's office in London, egged on by yells that "the Company had not made a Dividend for some years, but they would make one now." 1 It was true that the Company had not paid dividends to its shareholders for six years, but these weavers did not own shares. The weavers rioted, sent petitions, and published tracts to demand protection from the apparently devastating competition of cotton calicoes imported by the Company to London and then distributed to the rest of Britain, Europe, West Africa, the West Indies, and the Americas. Woolen and silk producers constituted two of England's most important manufacturing sectors, and their suffering posed major economic, human, administrative, and political problems. In 1700 Parliament attempted to solve these problems with "An Act for the more effectual employing the Poor, by encouraging the Manufactures of this Kingdom," the first Calico Act. 2 The act prohibited the

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The Pleasure of Business and the Business of Pleasure: Gender, Credit, and the South Sea Bubble

Cited by 13 publications

References 19 publications

Calico Madams and South Sea Cheats: Global Trade, Finance, and Popular Protest in Early Hanoverian England

Calico Madams and South Sea Cheats: Global Trade, Finance, and Popular Protest in Early Hanoverian England

Troværdighedsbobler. Penge, fantasi og virkelighed i Jonathan Swifts "Gullivers rejser"

Making an Imperial Compromise: The Calico Acts, the Atlantic Colonies, and the Structure of the British Empire

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