Bankers Magazine


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Gender, Class, and Freedom in Modern Political Theory


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In Gender, Class, and Freedom in Modern Political Theory, Nancy Hirschmann demonstrates not merely that modern theories of freedom are susceptible to gender and class analysis but that they must be analyzed in terms of gender and class in order to be understood at all. Through rigorous close readings of major and minor works of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Mill, Hirschmann establishes and examines the gender and class foundations of the modern understanding of freedom. Building on a social constructivist model of freedom that she developed in her award-winning book The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom, she makes in her new book another original and important contribution to political and feminist theory. Despite the prominence of "state of nature" ideas in modern political theory, Hirschmann argues, theories of freedom actually advance a social constructivist understanding of humanity. By rereading "human nature" in light of this insight, Hirschmann uncovers theories of freedom that are both more historically accurate and more relevant to contemporary politics. Pigeonholing canonical theorists as proponents of either "positive" or "negative" liberty is historically inaccurate, she demonstrates, because theorists deploy both conceptions of freedom simultaneously throughout their work.




The Works of John Locke,


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Money, Politics and Power


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The Nine Years’ War with France was a period of great institutional innovation in public finance and of severe monetary turmoil for England. It saw the creation of the Bank of England; a sudden sharp fall in the external value of the pound; a massive undertaking to melt down and recoin most of the nation’s silver currency; a failed attempt to create a National Land Bank as a competitor to the Bank of England; and the ensuing outbreak of a sharp monetary and financial crisis. Histories of this period usually divide these events into two main topics, treated in isolation from one another: the recoinage debate and ensuing monetary crisis and a ‘battle of the banks’. The first is often interpreted as the pyrrhic victory of a creditor-dominated parliament over the nation’s debtors, one that led very predictably to the ensuing monetary crisis. The second has been construed as a contest between whig-merchant and tory-gentry visions of the proper place of banking in England’s future. This book binds the two strands into a single narrative, resulting in a very different interpretation of both. Parliamentary debate over the recoinage was superficial and misleading; beneath the surface, it was just another front for the battle of the banks. And the latter had little to do with competing philosophies of economic development; it was rather a pragmatic struggle for profit and power, involving interlocking contests between two groups of financiers and two sets of politicians within the royal administration. The monetary crisis of summer 1696 was not the result of poor planning by the Treasury; rather it was a continuation of the battle of the banks, fought on new ground but with the same ultimate intent – to establish dominance in the lucrative business of private lending to the crown.










John Locke: Correspondence


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This is the twenty-first volume in the Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke. The series aims to provide authoritative critical editions of all the writings of one of the most important intellectuals in the early-modern Anglophone world. The present volume completes the Correspondence edited by the late E. S. de Beer, published between 1976 and 1989. It contains some 300 documents: newly discovered or augmented, or newly collected, letters by or to Locke, or between his close associates. New finds have emerged from archives worldwide; previously known letters are now improved from new manuscripts or supplemented by enclosures that had become detached from them; 'epistles dedicatory' in books by Locke or addressed to him are collected; third-party letters with direct bearing on Locke are included; as also Locke's agreements with publishers for the printing of his books. The volume covers Locke's manifold interests, from childrearing to medicine to cartography; from the exercise of patronage to the political economy of England's burgeoning empire; from the management of his Somerset tenants to relations with fellow philosopher Damaris Masham; from a trial for heresy to surveillance letters when Locke was suspect; from book collecting to calendrical reform. Locke's critics and vindicators are here, attacking and defending his published works. Considerable material has come to light bearing on Locke's encounters with Carolina and policies when a founding member of the Board of Trade and Plantations. The volume is supported by Mark Goldie's introduction and by an extensive explanatory editorial apparatus.