Impunity and Capitalism: The Afterlives of European Financial Crises, 1690-1830.

The standard developmental narrative of early modern French and British financial systems goes something like this: while both states incurred massive debts from ever-increasing scale of military conflict, post-1688 Britain succeeded in establishing appropriate financing mechanisms (thanks largely to the relative security of property rights under constitutionalism), whereas the French monarchy's inability to handle its deficit eventually precipitated a chaotic revolution from which France emerged finally able modernize but having ceded hegemony to Britain. In the sixth chapter, Jackson reveals how French and British states of financial exception mobilized during the French Revolutionary Wars culminated in financial orders dominated by central banks, albeit differently constructed. For French historians, Jackson's book is an excellent example of the benefits of departing from well-trodden frameworks to tracing new genealogies of our present moment. [Extracted from the article]