In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, historians of England pioneered a series of new approaches to the nation's economic history. Commerce, finances and statecraft charts the development of these forms of writing and examines their importance for the economic, political and historical thought of the period.

Introduction Part I1 Tacitean history: Francis Bacon's History of the Reign of King Henry VII2 Exemplary history: William Camden's Annales3 Chronology and commerce: Edmund Howes' AnnalesPart II4 The English Civil War and the politics of economic statecraft5 Whig history: Paul de Thoyras de Rapin's Histoire6 Tory history: Thomas Salmon's Modern History7 Jacobite history: Thomas Carte's General HistoryPart III8 Economic statecraft and economic progress: William Guthrie's General History9 The end of economic statecraft: David Hume's History of England ConclusionNotes BibliographyIndex

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, historians of England pioneered a series of new approaches to the history of economic policy. Commerce, finance and statecraft charts the development of these forms of writing and explores the role they played in the period's economic, political and historical thought. In doing so, it makes a significant intervention in the study of historiography, and provides an original account of early modern and Enlightenment historical writing. A broad selection of historical literature is discussed. This ranges from the work of Francis Bacon and William Camden in the Jacobean era, through a series of accounts shaped by the English Civil War and the party-political conflicts that followed it, to the eighteenth-century's major account of British history: David Hume's History of England. Particular attention is paid to the historiographical context in which historians worked and the various ways they copied, adapted and contested one another's narratives. The study demonstrates that historical writing was the site of a wide-ranging, politically charged debate concerning the relationship which existed – and should have existed – between government and commerce at various moments in England’s past. The book will be essential reading for historians and literary critics working on the history of historical writing, and historians, economists, political scientists and philosophers interested in historiographical theory.

'In this fine study, Ben Dew perceptively examines seventeenth- and eighteenth-century-historians of England’s narratives and normative assessments of commerce and finance, as well as monarchical policies designed to shape the new economic conditions. [...] Commerce, Finance and Statecraft deserves a wide readership. Among its many strengths, Dew’s book provides scholars working within the field of History of Capitalism with a timely meditation on the politics of the historians’ choices in how they explain and assess the past to shape the future.'Carl Wennerlind (Barnard College, Columbia University), in The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats (Autumn 2020).