Shifting Capital (eBook)

Aida Ramos is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Dallas, Texas, USA. She earned her PhD in economics at the University of Notre Dame, France. Her research interests are in the history of Scottish and Irish economic thought.

Acknowledgments 7
Contents 9
Abbreviations 11
1: Introduction 12
1.1 Economics and the Union 13
1.2 Mercantilism: Growth, Power, and Violence 17
1.3 Mercantilism and Variants of Violence 22
1.4 Shifting Capital 25
References 29
2: The Political and Economic Contest and Context: Scotland and England Before the Union 33
2.1 The Absent Presence: The Regal Union and English Supremacy 34
2.2 Adventures in Mercantilism: The Company of Scotland and the Darien Colony 36
2.3 Countermoves: The Act of Security and the Alien Act 42
References 49
3: Beyond Trade: Mercantilist Ideas of Dependency, Value, and Transmutation and Justification of Union 52
3.1 Trade, Value, and Authority 54
3.2 Trade, Defense, and Dependency 57
3.3 Poverty and Population 61
3.4 The Stock of Resources 63
3.5 Reallocation and Transmutation 64
3.5.1 Political Anatomy, Transmutation, and Transplantation 65
References 68
4: Trick or Treaty: The Negotiation and Articles of Union in the Context of Mercantilist Ideas 70
4.1 John Somers and the Mercantilist Reasoning of the Articles 71
4.2 The Drafting of the Treaty and the Articles as Structural Violence 76
4.2.1 The Debate in the Scottish Parliament 78
4.2.2 Protest 86
4.3 Advantages and Disadvantages 88
References 90
5: Balancing Act: The Equivalent, Political Arithmetic, and Mercantilist Structural Violence 92
5.1 The Creation of the Equivalent 94
5.2 The Equivalent and Political Arithmetic 96
5.3 Perceptions of the Equivalent 98
5.4 Counting the Costs: A Mercantilist Analysis of the Equivalent 103
5.5 Uncompensated 107
References 110
6: Shifting Capital 112
6.1 Balance Sheet: Gains, Losses, and Rhetoric 115
6.2 After the Union: Capital and the Capital 119
6.3 Gains from Political Trade 122
6.4 Human Capital 124
References 126
7: Unintended Consequences: Scottish Political Economy as a Reaction to Mercantilism 128
7.1 Theories of Growth, Wages, and Wellbeing 130
7.1.1 Circulation and the Surplus: Theories of Growth 131
7.1.2 Population, Poverty, and Wages 136
7.2 New Balance 138
7.3 Governance and Structural Violence 141
7.4 Conclusion 144
References 147
Index 148