Anthropologists in the Stock Exchange: A Financial History of Victorian Science by Marc Flandreau (review)

Marc Flandreau is an extremely talented financial historian and a scholar who tests the boundaries of his academic field. This book is a prime example of his approach. It is an ambitious book that seeks to forge linkages between two academic disciplines, anthropology and economic and financial history, in the furnace of Britain and its empire during the third quarter of the nineteenth century. The connection between anthropology and modern-day Wall Street and the City is one that has frequently been made in the financial press since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, not least by the Financial Times journalist Gillian Tett. It is also one that is well documented by contemporary academic anthropologists, for example, Karen Ho of the University of Minnesota. In both cases, the approach taken is to leverage the body of anthropological knowledge to deliver insights into the workings of modern finance and the institutions that walk its corridors, such as investment banks and private equity firms. Flandreau's approach is both different and far more ambitious than this. He is different in that his book describes the direct involvement of anthropologists as speculators and promoters in the business of the London Stock Exchange, rather than how the workings of contemporary banks and brokers reflected their ideas. It is more ambitious in that he seeks to document how the political economy of the stock exchange, and of the British Empire, in turn, influenced the development of anthropology as a social science. Such an agenda represents a tall order. As a result, this book, while entertaining and stimulating, is very demanding of the reader, who is most likely and at best familiar with one or the other of the two disciplines covered by this book, but not both.

One of the central and intriguing findings of Flandreau's research in this area is the fact of the involvement of anthropologists in the business of the London Stock Exchange. For example, Sir John Lubbock and Hyde Clarke were both anthropologists and, respectively, chairman and secretary of the Corporation of Foreign Bondholders, which was formed to represent the collective interests of London investors in negotiations with (delinquent) foreign borrowers and was one of the most important institutions operating within the City at this time. Other individuals such as George Joachim Goschen, Bedford Pim, and Augustus Pitt Rivers (formerly Lane Fox) are also described in considerable detail in order to illustrate the nexus between scientific enquiry, colonial expeditions, and government and infrastructure finance. The book is persuasive in the way it garners and presents a lot of carefully researched material.

Yet, as impressive as this scholarship is, one is left with doubts as to the significance of such a nexus and what it ultimately means. The role played by expert geographers and anthropologists to certify to an ignorant investor community that the country raising a loan has an economic future, on the one hand, and is free of cannibals, on the other, is clearly critical to getting the financing away. However, Flandreau strongly hints at much more. Inevitably, therefore, the appetite of scholars of a more quantitative disposition having been whetted, they are left wanting to know more. Questions that spring to mind are: How many of members of the stock exchange were anthropologists, and with what frequency did the then-practicing anthropologists involve themselves in the business of the stock exchange, whether as members, promoters, or investors?¹ Of course, simple counts of this sort ignore the fact that some individuals carry more weight in shaping events than do others. But even here the detailed vignettes drawn in the book need supplementing. In the case of the stock exchange, such evidence presumably exists—in terms of either the volume of finance undertaken or the centrality of these anthropologist-financiers in a network analysis of those involved in the...