Raphael Endre Adès

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-4800-9675

My research focuses mainly on two topics: early modern public banking and the history of crime. The former is my doctoral thesis and the latter was the subject of my MPhil (Oxford, 2022). My background is in Economic History (BSc, LSE, 2020; Lilian Knowles Prize). I completed my PLTO on Literature and Politics in Early Modern England and have served as an access tutor at Christ Church and Wadham, running sessions on the seventeenth-century English free banking system. I currently tutor visiting students on The History of the British Isles: Liberty, Commerce and Power, 1685-1830, and Crime and Punishment in England, 1280-1450. 

The Pre-history of the Bank of England 

Between 1553 and 1694, over one hundred proposals were submitted to the English government advocating the erection of a public bank. William Paterson’s famous and successful model was therefore the last in a long line of projects considered by subsequent governments. The principal question of my Doctorate is why, given the numerous benefits a public bank might have (and later did) offer to the Crown, the Commons, and the commerce of England, this great ‘project’ took more than a century and a half to see fulfilment. My preliminary findings suggest that one necessary pre-condition for a central bank in England might have been the revolution of 1688 and particular trust-centred governmental changes which accompanied it. Secondary questions include who the projectors were, where they got their ideas, what problems they intended their banks to solve, and whether the economic and social needs they addressed changed over time.

Supervisor: Professor Steven Gunn and Professor Sheilagh Ogilvie