The disparate papers in this book all deal with responses to the financial revolution that unfolded in England over the years 1688 to 1750 (or 1760), by taking up the unanticipated effects on various parts of the periphery of the first British Empire. The first section has three papers that trace the evolution over the entire period 1688–1815 of the philosophical discourse about the credit basis for money. It begins with Daniel Carey's discussion of the dispute between John Locke and William Lowndes over how to resolve the coinage shortage in the 1690s. Locke argued for recoinage at full value and Lowndes argued for recognition of the de facto devaluation already taking place. Even though Locke's views prevailed with full-value recoinage in 1696, it was Lowndes' perspective that gained credence over the following years. By mid-century, according to Christopher Finlay, even David Hume struck a philosophical compromise of sorts by arguing in favor of full-bodied currencies for dealings in foreign trade, but acknowledged that underweight coins could be generally accepted for payments in domestic trade. According to Paul Tonks, by the end of the eighteenth century and even after the fresh pressures of war finance during the Napoleonic Wars, four Scottish followers of Hume all praised the benign effects of the suspension of convertibility of Bank of England notes after February 1797. Using different arguments, all four men—Patrick Colquhoun, Sir John Sinclair, William Playfair, and George Chalmers—extolled the obvious benefits of the financial revolution for Britain's prosperity and imperial expansion, notwithstanding the late loss of the American colonies.

Section 2 takes up assorted examples of unintended consequences from the combination of the full-weight coinage after 1696 and the ongoing financial revolution led by the Bank of England. Robin Hermann argues that the Royal African Company's difficulties in making a profit from their nominal monopoly over the slave trade from West Africa had more to do with the Crown's insistence that they import gold into Britain, rather than export it for purchase of slaves in African ports as did their competitors, both the foreigners and the interlopers. The eventual collapse of the Royal African Company even after its capital expansion in 1720 during the South Sea bubble contrasted with the permission granted to the East India Company to export silver and the subsequent prosperity of that company, especially after its merger with the New East India Company in 1708. Hermann Wellenreuther argues that the American colonies were in fact independent economically from the mother country well before 1775. Indeed, British merchants were economically dependent on the colonists for buying an increasing portion of their manufactures while American merchants were exporting primary commodities to the West Indies, the Mediterranean, France, and northern Europe rather than Britain. Domestically, the colonies were happily financing internal trade with paper currencies with various backings and paying for British imports with silver earned from trade with the West Indies, France, and the Mediterranean. The Acts of Trade and Navigation did not change to reflect this new reality, which arose from the innovative response of the American colonies to the financial demands of the mother country. Roger J. Fechner brings to light the influential but relatively neglected work of John Witherspoon, an immigrant Scot and president of Princeton College, who influenced Alexander Hamilton to create a metallic-based currency for the United States. Witherspoon's Essay on Money in 1786 laid out convincing arguments for government to sustain the purchasing value of its taxes by maintaining a sound, metal-based currency.

These essays set up the context for the papers in Section III, “Credit and the Matter of the Irish Public.” Charles Ivar McGrath deals with the tortured course of the creation and maintenance of a “national debt” in Ireland, one that was really intended to solidify the support of the Anglican ruling elite within Ireland. Sean Moore continues this theme by arguing that the pawn shop lending exemplified by Dean Swift's small, no interest loans, were really a form of “confessional coercion” leading to de facto debt bondage of the Irish public to the Anglican elite. C. George Caffentzis analyzes then the implicit motives of Bishop Berkeley's attempts to establish a national bank in Ireland and the resistance to it by the ruling classes. The final essay by Kevin Barry discusses the different responses within Ireland to the suspension of convertibility by the Bank of England in 1797, noting that the Bank of Ireland followed suit in Southern Ireland, but that landlords in Northern Ireland insisted on maintaining rents in full-valued coin. The difference in economic effects sets the stage for Maria Edgeworth's trenchant descriptions of the influence of credit relations across Ireland and Britain in her novels for that period.

Unlike the American colonies, suffering Ireland didn't manage to obtain independence of its money supply, much less gain its political independence while what economic gains occurred were captured by the mother country. While the impact of the financial revolution in England upon the future economic development of Britain is still very much a matter of scholarly dispute and interest, this book shows that equally interesting and important topics await further research along the periphery of the empire.