dr. ME (Mark) Hay

Biography

I read history in Amsterdam, Paris, and Oxford, before taking up an AHRC-funded doctorate in history at King’s College London. My doctoral research, entitled “Calculated Risk. Collaboration and Resistance in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Netherlands, 1780-1806”, explored Dutch financial diplomacy in the Age of Democratic Revolutions. My current research is developed along three lines of inquiry.

1] Resilience of the Atlantic Economies, 1775-1825.

This project examines how businesses, and commercial-financial networks, navigated the strife-ridden Age of Democratic Revolutions, 1750-1850. The project focusses on Anglo-Dutch houses and networks, and how they managed political and economic risk over shifting political borders. The project consist of two parts, a social network analysis of Anglo-Dutch financial networks, and an exploration of the formal and informal institutions that were developed across Britain and the Netherlands to manage uncertainty and seize opportunities as they arose from conflict.

2] Capital Women.

As entrepreneurs, managers, and partners, women played a vital role in Amsterdam’s 18th‑century capital market. By the early 19th century, however, they had been pushed to the margins. This project reconstructs the careers of female financiers to restore their agency as key drivers of Amsterdam’s financial vitality, while investigating when, how, and why their exclusion occurred.

3] The Military and Financial History of War, 1780-1815.

My earliest work examined coalition warfare and coalition diplomacy with a particular interest in the relationship between global affairs and local impact. My research focus has since shifted to a comparative study of war financing, to include both resource mobilisation and resource extraction, by the French-led Revolutionary and Napoleonic Coalitions and the anti-French coalitions. My research has progressed along two axes. 1] developing a new typology and methodology for quantifying resource flows generated by war and peace making. 2] exploring the impact of a near quarter century of military, political, and economic conflict on the globalising European financial architecture of late 18th and early 19th century, with a particular interest on the evolution of lending on the primary market for international government finance, and its migration from Amsterdam to London.