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Riches and Poverty: Capitalism in Britain, 1680-1830 - Context

Module description

Bookended by financial and industrial revolutions, the long eighteenth century was a time of significant commercial development. What impact did these economic transformations have on people’s everyday lives? The market is much more than a place for exchanging goods. It is the space where power is brokered, and it structures human relationships. This module concerns Britain’s transition to a capitalist market society in the long eighteenth century (c.1680-1830), explored from social, cultural and economic perspectives. The module will consider what it meant to be in debt, the role that gender played in economic life, and the ethics that governed the market. We will consider how wealth and property were defined in terms of the value of things, and the value of people and their bodies. By studying the history of capitalism, we will address concepts that continue to sit at the basis of our economy today.

Module aims - intentions of the module

The long eighteenth century was a time of significant economic and institutional change, bookended by financial and industrial revolutions. Britain celebrated many economic advances, including imperial and commercial expansion, wealth accumulation, and the invention of modern banking. However, many experienced the eighteenth century in terms of increasing insecurity, wealth in, and the commodification of their bodies. This module aims to:

• Provide an overview of the economic history of the eighteenth century
• Consider the complex implications of the market, focusing on the economic lives of men, women and children in terms of the jobs that they did, the wealth that they owned, and the standards of living that they experienced
• Considers the social relations and power structures that the market bequeathed, and how contemporaries thought about and understood the market
• Use an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on perspectives from sociology, anthropology, art history and economics
• Engage with the complex historiographies of economic life, to consider concepts that continue to sit at the basis of our economy today, including theories of value and the ethics of the market
• Develop research, analytical, interpretative and communication skills that can be applied in further academic studies or in graduate careers

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Evaluate the different complex themes in eighteenth century economic history from social, cultural and economic perspectives
• 2. Make close specialist evaluation of the key developments within the period, developed through independent study and seminar work

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Analyse the key developments within Britain’s economic history during the period 1680-1830
• 4. Focus on and comprehend complex issues
• 5. Understand and deploy relevant historical terminology in a comprehensible manner
• 6. Follow the changing causes of and responses to commercial development

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 7. Independently and autonomously study and also work within a group, including presentation of material for group discussion, developed through the mode of learning
• 8. Digest, select and organise material to produce, to a deadline, a coherent and cogent argument, developed through the mode of assessment
• 9. Present complex arguments orally

Syllabus plan

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

• The financial revolution: imagining money
• Bodies and labour
• Credit
• Being in debt
• Value and worth
• The debtors’ prisons
• The commodification of bodies
• Poverty and inequality
• Bankruptcy
• Images of wealth
• Gender and investment
• Exchanging wealth: gifts

Some of you will already have studied aspects Britain’s economic history; others will not. The introductory sessions will therefore be important in offering a broad overview within which framework everyone can place their subsequent work. The co-requisite module will also provide close focus on the historical sources available for study. You will be expected to prepare for seminars by reading and evaluating the respective sources in advance, and will discuss the issues raised by them in the seminars.

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• D. Graeber. Debt: The First 5,000 Years (Melville House, 2011).
• C. Tomlins. Freedom Bound: Law, Labour, and Civic Identity in Colonising English America, 1580–1865 (Cambridge, 2010).
• D. Valenze. The Social Life of Money in the English Past (Cambridge University Press, 2006)
• S. Newman. A New World of Labor: The Development of Plantation Slavery in the British Atlantic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).
• K. Wrightson. Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain (Yale University Press, 2000)
• B. Hill, Women, Work and Sexual Politics in Eighteenth Century England (UCL Press, 1994)
• C. Muldrew, The economy of obligation: the culture of credit and social relations in early modern England (Palgrave MacMillan, 1998).
• Shepard. Accounting for Oneself: Worth, Status and the Social Order in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, 2016).
• M. Overton et al. Production and consumption in English Households , 1600-1750 (2004).
• Steve Hindle and Alexandra Shepard (eds), Remaking English society: social relations and social change in early modern England (2013).
• J. Bohstedt. The Politics of Provisions: Food Riots, Moral Economy, and Market Transition in England, c. 1550-1850 (Farnham, 2010).
• Vickery. ‘His and Hers: Gender, Consumption and Household Accounting in Eighteenth-Century England’, Past and Present , Supplement 1 (2006), 12–38.
• S. King and A. Tomkins (eds). The Poor in England, 1700-1850: An Economy of Makeshifts (2003).
• J. Wareing. Indentured migration and the servant trade from London to America, 1618-1718 : 'there is great want of servants' (Oxford University Press, 2017).

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE - https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=6871

Key words search

Capitalism, wealth, financial revolution, industrial revolution