Call for Papers on “Finance and the American Revolution”

The Program in Early American Economy and Society at the Library Company of Philadelphia is planning a symposium on the topic “Finance and the American Revolution, 1763-1794,” to take place in Philadelphia on 24–25 September 2026.

Organizers are now inviting scholars to propose papers for that symposium, to be circulated to attendees and then discussed in panels. They say, “We are broadly interested in papers that speak to public and private finance, credit, trade, and exchange in political and social contexts.”

The call for papers continues:

We are interested in thinking capaciously about finance and the American Revolution. To give a sense of some, but by no means all, possible topics:

• British fiscal policy in the coming of and prosecution of the war
• US diplomatic efforts on behalf of trade, credit, and financial assistance
• Free trade, free ports, smuggling, privateering, and the role of merchants
• Monetary policies and institutions, including currency, credit, banks, and insurance
• Trade, gift-giving, and plunder relating to Native nations
• Dispossession, speculation, and landownership
• Taxation and populist resistance
• Inflation, scarcity and price-fixing, price-gouging
• Slavery, the slave trade, and their relationships with finance
• Women and finance on the homefront and after the war
• Loyalists, property seizures, and post-war claims

To propose a paper, researchers should submit a 300-word abstract and a two-page CV to peaes@librarycompany.org with the subject line “Finance and the American Revolution Workshop” by 25 October 2025. The papers should be about 25 pages long, and drafts will be due in August 2026. Eventually the University of Pennsylvania Press will publish a volume of articles developed from this event.