This book is about the impact of one international financial crisis on people and places removed from its centre. It was written during another one. Readers seeking lessons from the experiences of Irish investors in the South Sea Company to help escape the post-2008 global financial crisis may not, however, find them in this book. Nevertheless this project, which was conceived in late 2007, and which was started in earnest a year later as the Eurozone crisis hit Ireland, was researched and written with the storms of the current crisis raging in the background. The impact of these contemporary events on its content is, however, if anything, of the unconscious variety. Despite occasional temptations, direct parallels have been avoided, although readers may wish to draw their own inferences. If the global economic circumstances within which this book was written were rather precipitous this has, however, been a good time to be involved in financial and economic history with these sub-disciplines enjoying new levels of popular and scholarly attention. This renewed interest in what were previously arcane subjects has helped to make writing this book a much easier task. Financially this research was initially funded by a two-year postdoctoral fellowship awarded by the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences, which allowed me to develop my ideas in the congenial and supportive environment of the School of History and Archives at University College Dublin.