PROVIDENCE,
PROPAGANDA, AND PROFIT
in the Early Modern English World

Appeals to providence can restrain unbridled ambition, but the same belief and accompanying rhetoric can also enable political enterprise, economic speculation, and personal advancement. This conference invites historians of religion, politics, and economic culture to engage in interdisciplinary dialogues and to examine how providential ideas and language encouraged, constrained, justified, or even glorified profit-making across the British Isles and the English (and later British) diaspora from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.

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We aim to explore the notion of "profit" in its broadest sense, whether it be political favour, reputation-building, or financial gain. There is no constraint on the geographical scope, but proposals must address the religious experiences of individuals and communities across the British Isles or in the wider English and British imperial world. We are particularly interested in papers that interrogate established narratives of post-reformation religious politics and economic culture, such as the thesis of England's transformation from reformation to improvement in the long seventeenth century.