Zane Jennings

Power Fellow, 2025/26

Zane’s current research areas are the organisational history of the English East India Company (EIC), the English financial revolution, and the influence of military supply chains on English state formation and commercial politics.  For his PhD at the London School of Economics, he produced a new analytical narrative of the EIC’s transition to a permanent capital.  The thesis makes the case that the transition was a consequence of private, rather than state, initiative.  It reappraises the historical record around the charter the EIC received from Oliver Cromwell in 1657; analyses the political implications of the EIC’s role as a supplier of saltpetre following the English Civil War; and produces new financial data for EIC stockholding, stock trading, and borrowing during the Restoration period.  During this fellowship, Zane plans to turn his thesis into a monograph fit for publication by a university press, and to publish the findings from his data on EIC borrowing and stock trading in the Restoration with regard to the timing of the English financial revolution.  Additionally, he plans to begin work on his next project, tracing the emergence of an fiscal-military nexus of merchants, financiers, and state officials in England following the military expansion of the English Civil War.