The effort to finance both trade expansion and government expenditure in the decade which followed the 1688 landing of William of Orange at Torbay and the Glorious Revolution produced a significant economic shift from short-term to long-term loans. Banking had grown haphazardly since the Civil War and the flotation of joint-stock companies, of insurance schemes for specific trading initiatives, or against fire or premature death, and the organisation of public loans to the state had hitherto been proposed and developed as occasion required. These flotations continued: a rash of joint-stock companies flourished and died, particular around the speculative South Sea Bubble year of 1720 during which around two hundred insurance companies wer

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Published 08 January 2001

Citation: Nicholson, Colin. "Financial Revolution". The Literary Encyclopedia. 8 January 2001.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=388, accessed 20 November 2009.]