Book excerpt: "This collection gathers the expertise of scholars in several disciplines to examine the manner in which financial and economic arguments were expressed in pamphlets, broadsides, and longer works of literature in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and to assess to what extent the political realities of the day were informed by these debates or, alternatively, shaped by that rhetoric. The contributors to the volume draw upon an extensive variety of contemporary sources and modern analyses of the formative years of the financial revolution to reexamine many of the existing conventional ideas about the relationship between money, power, and print, and to suggest that the subject is far more complex and interrelated than most studies up to now have indicated. Particular attention is paid to the fact that the financial revolution did not occur in London in isolation from the various regions of the British Isles." "The essays address the question of how money, power, and print influenced the contemporary emergence of a radically different public finance structure in the British empire and how retrospective understanding of the results have influenced historical readings of the texts and the events. A number of contributions offer detailed analyses of particular moments or structures in the reshaping of the public financial sphere, such as the parliamentary and pamphlet debate over the establishment of the Bank of England and proposals for a land bank as an alternative. Other essays focus on broader themes illustrative of larger trends during the period, such as the Scottish support for an expedition to Madagascar to take advantage of presumed pirate treasure on the island."--BOOK JACKET.