The starting point of the workshop is the assumption that relatively few and oftentimes socially connected persons were directly involved in early modern financial bubbles and that stock trading was mostly limited geographically. The workshop intends to examine how people dealt with the bursting of the bubbles in the local context.

The Project E04 “After the stock market crashes of 1720 in Paris and London – diagnoses of the threat and attempts to deal with it”, supervised by Prof. Dr. Renate Dürr and Dr. Daniel Menning and part of the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 923 “Threatened Orders”, invites paper proposals for a workshop in Tübingen (Germany) from April 7 to April 9, 2016.

Argument

Research on speculative bubbles in the early modern period and the 19th century has frequently focused on the question whether, from an economic point of view, the investors’ behavior can be described as rational or irrational. However, it has rarely been analyzed how the diverse participants behaved after the crash, i.e. how they dealt with the possibly traumatic experience of the price slump and which consequences they drew from it; in short, how they tried to return to normality.

The starting point of the workshop is the assumption that relatively few and oftentimes socially connected persons were directly involved in the financial bubbles of this time period and that stock trading was mostly limited geographically. Therefore, the workshop intends to examine how people dealt with the bursting of the bubbles in the local context. Economic, social and cultural attempts to interpret, explain and cope with the consequences of the speculative bubbles will be discussed. A special focus will be placed on the perspectives and spheres of activity of the (smaller) participants.

Papers may inter alia address the following questions:

• How did people try to explain the sudden crash of stock prices?
• Which consequences did the events have for trust between individuals and for the confidence of individuals in politics?
• How did investors try to get governments to take interest in their situation?
• What role did social networks play when actors tried to cope with the crash?
• Which economic strategies did losers develop, what use did winners make of their new wealth?

It is our intention to cover travelling and accommodation costs as far as funds from the Collaborative Research Center permit. 

Submission guidelines

Please send abstracts of 250 words for a 20 minute paper together with a short CV in German or English

by November 16, 2015

to: Marlene Kessler/Rafael Streib
University of Tübingen, CRC 923 „Threatened orders“

Keplerstr. 2
72074 Tübingen

marlene.kessler@uni-tuebingen.de
rafael.streib@uni-tuebingen.de

Scientific committee

• Renate Dürr (University of Tübingen)
• Daniel Menning (University of Tübingen)
• Marlene Kessler (University of Tübingen)
• Rafael Streib (University of Tübingen)