The British financial revolution and the empire of credit in St. Kitts and Nevis, 1706–21*

Abstract

Abstract The British ‘financial revolution’ was a colonial as well as a metropolitan phenomenon. Yet the structures used by colonists to participate in it have rarely been studied in their own right. A close examination of the islands of St. Kitts and Nevis, which received almost £100,000 in government debentures between 1706 and 1721, confirms that they used the same types of networks and agents as their counterparts in Britain and Ireland to overcome the problems of distance and to manage their investments. In functional terms, the new ‘empire of credit’ was therefore merely an extension of the British financial revolution.