Speculative communities originated in late-nineteenth-century futures markets, not the post-Bretton Woods era.

Evidence

However, as I will now argue, the rise of speculative communities must be located in a longer arc of historical changes originating in the dawn of modern finance capitalism and, specifically, in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the first formal futures markets were established in North America and Western Europe. … These first and unprecedented heights of speculative activity shaped markets’ relationship with publics for years to come. They caused tremors that shook up fin de siècle politics and portended new power conflicts. In the heartlands of global finance, financiers, farmers, industrial workers, and populist movements became steeped in wars of speculation and gambling: around the future prices of hog and grain, the wages of urban laborers, and the state’s own monetary and regulatory interventions. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 110

Categorization

• XREF: Directly engages and challenges the standard scholarship on financialization, which anchors on the 1970s Bretton Woods collapse — a move the reader should track for the book’s thesis argument. — connects to: Modern speculative communities trace to the 1860s-70s founding of formal futures markets. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 165