Dr Andrew Edwards - Money and the Making of the American Revolution

Join us as we discuss our favourite subject- money. In this case the lack of money in Britains’s American colonies and the role that deficiency played in bringing those colonies to revolt. The founders of what became The United States of America famously railed against ‘taxation without representation’ but was this just part of the dispute over a much bigger issue? On this, the 250th anniversary of American independence, we discuss why a better understanding of what is money and who can create it may have prevented a rift between Britain and its American colonies.

Who makes money? What is money? Who distributes money? These are all foundational issues for any colony or country and the American colonies found their growing economies constrained by the insistence from London that money was what we could call today ‘a reserved matter.’ In an age when most of the circulating medium was in the form of silver the global supply/demand conditions for that metal, particularly in Britains’s increasingly important trading partners India and China, placed constraints upon the availability of that form of money in the American colonies. The struggle to create another form of money was a matter of life and death and brought the constitutional rift that manifested itself as a dispute over taxes. In Money and the Making of the American Revolution Andrew David Edwards shows just how important the establishment of a monetary system suited to the American colonies was and how Britains failure to accommodate new forms of money in America led to revolt.

Info: Please ensure you arrive no later than 18:25 as latecomers may not be admitted once the event has commenced.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Library of Mistakes, 33A Melville Street Lane, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

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