Commerce, finance and statecraft charts the emergence of new approaches to England's economic history in the historical writing of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The book explores the work of the period's most influential historians Ư- among them Francis Bacon, William Camden, Paul de Rapin-Thoyras and David Hume - and shows how these writers, and their contemporaries, were engaged in a series of hotly contested, politically-charged debates concerning the management of England's commercial and financial interests. This book will be essential reading for historians and literary critics working on Restoration and eighteenth-century historical writing, and historians, economists, political scientists, and philosophers interested in historiographical theory.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-271) and index.

Tacitean history: Francis Bacon's History of the Reign of King Henry VII -- Exemplary history: William Camden's Annales -- Chronology and commerce: Edmund Howes's Annales -- The English Civil War and the politics of economic statecraft -- Whig history: Paul de Rapin de Thoyras's Histoire -- Tory history: Thomas Salmon's Modern History -- Jacobite history: Thomas Carte's General History -- Economic statecraft and economic progress: William Guthrie's General History.

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