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"Money United States History Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775."
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Wampum and the origins of American money
\"Wampum has become a synonym for money, and it is widely assumed that it served the same purposes as money among the Native Algonquians even after coming into contact with European colonists' money. But to equate wampum with money only matches one slippery term with another, as money itself was quite ill-defined in North America for decades during its colonization. Fledgling colonial currencies assimilated much more from Native American trading practices than they imposed on the locals, so much so that colonists regularly expressed fears of \"becoming Indians\" in their widespread use of paper money, a novel economic innovation adapted from wampum. In this stimulating and intriguing book, Marc Shell illuminates the context in which wampum was used by describing how money circulated in the colonial period and the early history of the United States. Wampum itself, generally tubular beads made from clam or conch shells, was hardly a primitive version of a coin or dollar bill, as it represented to both Native Americans and colonial Europeans a unique medium through which language, art, culture, and even conflict were negotiated. This wide-ranging exploration of economics, literature, and racial and ethnic imagery throughout American history is extensively illustrated with more than a hundred images of documents, artworks, and artifacts, including numerous depictions of Native Americans on paper money.\"--Jacket.
Book
Currency Policies and Legal Development in Colonial New England
This Article presents a new interpretation of the relation of law to economic development in colonial New England. Prior legal historical scholarship has focused almost exclusively on judicial decisionmaking, emphasizing judges' role in adapting the law in some optimal way to satisfy local preferences regarding the development of markets. This Article suggests that the relationship of law to economic development cannot be understood without consideration of the impact of colonial currency policies on the structure of the government, the nature of contractual relations, and the quantity of litigation. The seventeenth-century colonial economy can be characterized as plagued by an extreme scarcity of a circulating medium of exchange, in many periods compelling resort to barter. Currency scarcity reduced the possibility of market exchanges, prevented specialization, and suppressed market conditions. Colonial citizens developed means of surpassing pure barter, but the most central of these, such as book accounts--a system of keeping tabs within an insular community--reinforced localism. Currency scarcity also limited colonial governments' ability to impose monetary taxes with which to finance operations. The circulation of paper money therefore vastly increased the potential for a greater volume of exchanges, greater specialization, and market development, as well as colonial governments' ability to finance more expansive operations. Colonial citizens' reliance on paper money, however, had an additional effect: The value of contractual obligations became dependent upon the stability of colonial governments' currency policies.
Journal Article