East India Company Shareholders and the South Sea Bubble

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1720 as an asset bubble. We shall show that this is the source of our pre-occupation
with analysing stock inventory behaviour in a network. It is also why we conduct
much of our analysis on a time-series of network subgraphs so that we can obtain a
perspective on how network structure dynamically changes. Along with a way of
doing dynamic network analysis, we use social affiliation data to show how we can
partition our networks and demonstrate the social dimension of investor behaviour as
well.
2. The South Sea Bubble and the East India Company
It is important to set the historical background of the South Sea Bubble and the EIC‟s
position within it. The South Sea Company was set up in 1711 with a capital stock of
more than £9 million. It was created in order to buy existing short-term government
debt and to help manage the national debt in a way similar to that followed by the
BoE. In addition to this role, the Company purposed to trade with the Spanish Empire
(Section V. A., Scott, 1910). By some persons Spanish America was seen as a more
promising trade area than was India and the Far East, as it was more accessible and
the customers were more likely to purchase traditional English exports such as cloth
and iron goods. For Spanish colonists ordinary trade with any country except Spain
was strictly forbidden, but after the conclusion of the Treaty of Utrecht (1712), the
South Sea Company was given sole rights to carry on British trade with Spanish
America – the so-called South Seas. The South Sea Company had also obtained for 30
years the Asiento de Negros, a contract to be the sole supplier of slaves to the South
Seas. Britain already had colonies in the Caribbean and, as a result, had a large share