Songs of Speculation: Music and the Rise of Finance During the 1720 South Sea Bubble
Abstract (summary)
This dissertation explores how the opulent musical milieu of early eighteenth-century Britain—characterized by the soaring arias, proliferating ballads, fledgling opera ventures, an expanding music printing industry, and entrepreneurial musicians and patrons—can prompt us to think anew about the South Sea Bubble. Far from merely a dramatic episode in our economic past, this early modern financial crisis, viewed through the interplay of music and money, reveals itself as a momentous chapter in the history of modern culture.
Drawing on recent insights from Economic Humanities, financial anthropology, and the cultural turn in studies of the British Financial Revolution, this dissertation investigates music’s active yet often neglected role in shaping and reflecting the English political economy during the 1720 crisis. By expanding the archival ambit of eighteenth-century music scholarship—contextualizing musical sources alongside records of government, accounting, corporate management, and stock trading—this musical history of the South Sea Bubble lays bare the deep intersections of cultural production and nascent financial capitalism, illuminating a pre-disciplinary era when arts and politics, music and money, aesthetics and economics freely informed one another along a shared discursive continuum.
Two distinct musical genres closely intertwined with the 1720 crisis are examined in detail: 1) the Italian operas staged by the Royal Academy of Music, a chartered joint-stock company born out of English entrepreneurial zeal; and 2) the English ballads that erupted from London’s Exchange Alley, functioning as both market reportage and musical entertainment in the throes of the South Sea frenzy. On the one hand, an institutional analysis of the Royal Academy’s incorporation reveals how the joint-stock opera model reoriented English musical practice towards financial capital and markets, while also demonstrating the latter’s capacity to entrench itself within cultural production and shape the construction of musical meaning. On the other hand, a media-material study of the bubble ballads brings music to bear on the recent historiographic turn towards a behavioral understanding of the nature of the South Sea crisis, seen as a public mania conditioned by the contemporaneous mediascape and the contagious spread of evolving economic narratives and sentiments.
This dissertation argues that music, by rendering the early modern bubble economy audible, allows us to recover the enduring lessons of the 1720 financial crisis as historical, sensorial experiences. Music echoes with the visceral impacts of the monetarist fantasy of infinite growth, the conflicting notions of economic liberty, and the epistemic fragility of derivatives finance. By tuning into these resonances, music reveals that modern financial capitalism, from its inception, has not just rested on data and metrics but also on cultural experiences and imaginations. This study of the historical entanglement between music and money challenges the functionalist tendencies of economic history writing—a reminder that the market has always been a matter of feeling as much as fact.
Alternate abstract:
本論文探討十八世紀初英國日益奢華的音樂文化——從劇院中高昂的詠嘆調、市井街頭激增的民謠，到初創的歌劇企業、蓬勃發展的音樂印刷產業，以及充滿創新精神的音樂家與贊助人——如何啟發我們以全新的視角看待1720年的被稱為南海泡沫事件的投資金融風暴。這場金融危機不僅是經濟史上一幕戲劇性的事件，更是音樂與金融交匯中彰顯的現代文化史上的重要篇章。
結合經濟人文學、金融人類學及英國金融革命史研究中最近與文化史的聯動，本論文考察音樂在南海金融危機期間塑造與反映英國政治經濟的重要但常被音樂學者忽視的作用。通過擴展十八世紀音樂研究的歷史文檔範疇——將音樂資料與政府記錄、會計文件、公司管理和股票交易等文檔同時置於經濟史的語境中一同考察——本論文揭示了文化生產與新興金融資本主義之間的深刻聯繫。它展現了一個在學術思想之專業分科尚未嚴格劃界的時代，藝術與政治、音樂與金融、美學與經濟如何在共同的話語中交融共生。
本論文重點分析了兩種與南海金融危機密切相關的音樂類型：一是由皇家歌劇院，作為泡沫經濟期間成立的股份制企業，製作的意大利歌劇；二是倫敦交易所巷於危機期間湧現的英國民謠，這些民謠兼具市場報道、融資宣傳與娛樂功能。一方面，本文對皇家歌劇院股份制模式的制度分析揭示了這種創新的歌劇模式如何將英國音樂實踐導向金融資本與市場；同時也展示了金融邏輯如何融入文化生產，並對音樂意義的建構產生影響。另一方面，本文對泡沫時期民謠的從媒介與物質文化視角的研究表明，音樂可以有效地加入到近期從金融行為學角度理解南海危機的歷史的跨學科對話——將其視為由當時媒介環境及其傳播的市場敘事與情緒所引發的公共狂熱。
本論文主張，音樂通過將這場英國近代泡沫經濟轉化為一種聽覺歷史，使我們能夠以感官性的方式回溯1720年金融危機的深遠意義與教訓。音樂因此揭示了近代金融啟蒙期的種種思潮的感性衝擊，譬如早期貨幣主義無限增長幻想、經濟自由主義萌芽下不同政治觀念的對立、以及衍生金融從認識論角度上表現的脆弱性。通過十八世紀英國音樂文化中的這些經濟思想之回聲，本文表明現代金融資本主義從其誕生之初便不僅依賴於數據與指標，也根植於文化體驗與想像。經由探索音樂與金融的歷史交錯，本研究挑戰了經濟史寫作中的功能主義傾向，提醒我們市場始終既涉及客觀事實，也關乎主觀感受。
Indexing (details)
European history;
Economic history
0509: Economic history
0335: European history
