Hogeland on Founding Finance in Boston, 23 Oct.

William Hogeland, author of The Whiskey Rebellion, Declaration, Inventing American History, and the Hysteriography blog, will speak on Tuesday, 23 October, at the Old State House in Boston about his latest book.

Founding Finance: How Debt, Speculation, Foreclosures, Protests, and Crackdowns Made Us a Nation “brings to life the violent conflicts over economics, class, and finance that played directly, and in many ways ironically, into the hardball politics of forming the nation and ratifying the Constitution.”

A longer description from the University of Texas Press:

Mixing lively narrative with fresh views of America’s founders, William Hogeland offers a new perspective on America’s economic infancy: foreclosure crises that make our current one look mild; investment bubbles in land and securities that drove rich men to high-risk borrowing and mad displays of ostentation before dropping them into debtors’ prisons; depressions longer and deeper than the great one of the twentieth century; crony mercantilism, war profiteering, and government corruption that undermine any nostalgia for a virtuous early republic; and predatory lending of scarce cash at exorbitant, unregulated rates, which forced people into bankruptcy, landlessness, and working in the factories and on the commercial farms of their creditors.

This story exposes and corrects a perpetual historical denial—by movements across the political spectrum—of America’s all-important founding economic clashes, a denial that weakens and cheapens public discourse on American finance just when we need it most.

This event is scheduled to start at 6:30 P.M. and to end at 8:00 or 8:30, depending on which message I look at. Hogeland says, “This will be a talk, Q&A, and, I believe, book signing.” I predict lively opinions about politics then and now, and a very faint chance of banjo music. The Bostonian Society asks folks to register to reserve a seat.