Defoe and Economics

Seager, Nicholas

Abstract

This chapter outlines Daniel Defoe’s economic ideas, first situating his periodical essays, pamphlets, and economic tracts in the context of the financial revolution, then considering anxieties he expresses about the new ‘culture of commerce’, and finally applying these contexts to his novels. Defoe was a wholehearted supporter of Britain’s home trade, promoting vigorous circulation, generous wages, and high employment as conditions of national prosperity. He was also a mercantilist who advocated the state’s cultivation of favourable trade balances with foreign competitors, promoting high exports and colonial development. Defoe believed that trade improved society and the men who practised it, that it was part of God’s plan for fallen humanity, and that its operations matched the beauty of the creation and encouraged human ingenuity and progress. But he was concerned that credit and commerce posed insoluble moral challenges for his contemporaries, and his novels capture this ambivalence.

Citation

Seager, N. Defoe and Economics. In The Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe (249-271). Oxford University Press (OUP). https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198827177.013.41

• Online Publication Date: Dec 18, 2023
• Deposit Date: Jan 5, 2024
• Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
• Pages: 249-271
• Book Title: The Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe
• Chapter Number: 14
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198827177.013.41