Exploring Legal & Business History
I am currently a professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in the Department of History where I research the history of human cooperation through the study of law, moral economy and business.
New Research and Presentations
The Early Modern Offshore World: Capitalism and Market Formation
Explore the network of offshore jurisdictions surrounding Britain during the eighteenth century to understand how they functioned to enable merchants to evade taxes and regulation. Business History Conference, London, UK
High Tariffs = Smuggling = the Offshore World
I recently wrote for ProMarket about how early modern smuggling stimulated a network of tax evasion through offshore havens. For some modern parallels have a read of A Tale of Tariffs and the Making of the Modern Offshore Market.
Paper: The Corruption Imaginary: Reconstructing ‘the Swamp’ in Early Modern England
Learn more about political polarization and how people in the past imagined corruption and conspiracy in political life at the North American Conference on British Studies, Montreal Canada, November 13-16, 2025
The Intellectual History of Milton Friedman's Criticism of Corporate Social Responsibility
My article on the intellectual origins of Milton Friedman's famous criticism of corporate social responsibility and monopoly is now available at Modern Intellectual History
Smuggling Database
Explore the early modern smugglers' world and visit my new database on smuggling prosecutions