Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Plates, Figures and Tables
- Editorial Note
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Varieties of Innovation: Ireland, Scotland and the Financial Revolution 1688–1720
- 2 Banking and Investment on the Periphery: The Case of Ireland
- 3 Investment from the Periphery: Irish Investors in the South Sea Company in Comparative and Transnational Perspective
- 4 ‘Most of Our Money of This Kingdom is gone over to the South Sea’: Irish Investors and the South Sea Company
- 5 ‘Nothing here but Misery’? The Economic Impact of the South Sea Bubble on Ireland
- 6 ‘A Thing They Call a Bank’: Irish Projects in the South Sea Year
- 7 The Proposals for a National Bank and the Irish Investment Community in 1720
- 8 ‘A Strong Presumption That This Bank May be a Bubble’: Misreading the Bubble and the Bank of Ireland Debates, 1721
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - ‘A Thing They Call a Bank’: Irish Projects in the South Sea Year
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Plates, Figures and Tables
- Editorial Note
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Varieties of Innovation: Ireland, Scotland and the Financial Revolution 1688–1720
- 2 Banking and Investment on the Periphery: The Case of Ireland
- 3 Investment from the Periphery: Irish Investors in the South Sea Company in Comparative and Transnational Perspective
- 4 ‘Most of Our Money of This Kingdom is gone over to the South Sea’: Irish Investors and the South Sea Company
- 5 ‘Nothing here but Misery’? The Economic Impact of the South Sea Bubble on Ireland
- 6 ‘A Thing They Call a Bank’: Irish Projects in the South Sea Year
- 7 The Proposals for a National Bank and the Irish Investment Community in 1720
- 8 ‘A Strong Presumption That This Bank May be a Bubble’: Misreading the Bubble and the Bank of Ireland Debates, 1721
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
During the first week of May 1720 a proposal was published in Dublin addressed to ‘the Nobility, Gentry and Commonalty of this Kingdom of Ireland’, calling for the establishment of a national bank. The proposed bank would address several contemporary economic grievances including the drain of Irish money to the South Sea Company. Public subscriptions were called for to raise the £500,000 capital believed to be necessary for its operation and subscribers' names were to be collected daily in the Merchant's Coffee House in the city from 19 May until the subscription was filled. This was the beginning of a scheme that would dominate Irish political and economic debate over the next eighteen months. The author of the prospectus was John Irwin, a somewhat obscure Dublin projector, and his was one of three projects for a national bank floated in early summer 1720. These bank proposals, together with two plans put forward for an Irish fire insurance company in June 1720, were part of a wider proliferation of ‘projects’ and bubbles which emerged across Britain and Ireland at this time, as attempts were made to cash in on the investment boom being driven by the South Sea Company. Some of these projects, like the North Sea Fishery in Scotland, the York Buildings Company and arguably the Bank of Ireland, were based on sound fundamentals. Others such as Richard Steele's fish importing business or the scheme for a perpetual motion company floated in London belonged more to the realm of fancy.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The South Sea Bubble and IrelandMoney, Banking and Investment, 1690–1721, pp. 125 - 142Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014