Cycnos | Volume 29.1 - Législation et progrès socio-économique dans le monde anglophone | Législation et contre-pouvoirs

Résumé :

In the midst of the nineteenth century, The Times exerted a significant influence on economic circles. Being the reference paper in the City, it used its wide social recognition to expose, denounce and, to some point, alter the shortcomings of London trading regulations. This article aims to investigate the material and symbolic basis of such an authority : how can an active economic operator become part of the very fabric of economic norms ? Our analysis primarily focuses on the gradual emergence of the stock exchange section. Till the beginning of the 1810s, it is little more than a raw list of security prices and exchange rates. The 1815 debate on the corn laws aroused the newspaper’s interest for economic matters. By the next decade, an entrepreneur and musical critic, Thomas Alsager, established a well-read daily compendium of trade news, Money-Market and City Intelligence. A specific financial department began to take shape within the newspaper, involving numerous narrative voices, from international correspondents to occasional informers. This socio-editorial organization had a wide symbolic impact. The extensive forgery scandal of 1840 and the following Bogle v. Lawson case contributed to transform the newspaper into a prime regulatory institution, along with the courts and the parliament. So far, the relative fuzziness of the economic section seems to have eased the affirmation of this important social role: being open to most subjective statements, The Times realized a valuable anteroom of official legislative debates.

Mots-clés : press, City of London, daily press, economic information, economic legislation, free trade, Habermas, modernity, 19th century, protectionism, public sphere, The Times

Date de publication : 2016-04-20