Debt, Design, and Disparity: Monied Power and the Institutional Roots of Unequal Britain (by Dr. Plamen Ivanov) — Pre-Order Now

What if “modern Britain” was built on a private franchise over money itself?
This book traces how a small clique of Whig entrepreneurs engineered the founding of the (private) Bank of England and, with it, the privatisation of credit creation. By shifting money issuance from a public prerogative to a shareholder-controlled institution, they rewired the fiscal channel—making public finance increasingly dependent on private bank credit and expanding public debt as the default mode of state funding.

Why it matters (then and now):

• Founding by design: Re-examines the Bank’s origins and shows how an elite network institutionalised a new regime where credit = power.
• From taxes to tethered sovereignty: Demonstrates how the Treasury’s growing reliance on interest-bearing bank money reshaped taxation, spending, and the political economy of scarcity.
• Empire on credit: Details how this architecture financed warfare and the outward expansion of the British Empire—projecting power abroad while embedding rent extraction at home.

Written in a clear, research-based style, the book blends archival investigation with institutional analysis to show how monetary design—not abstract equilibrium models—set the trajectory of the British state, its empire, and its inequalities.

For early interest or pre-orders: ivanov@arbe.org.uk.