American History - Fiat

Throughout the New World during the colonial period, hard currency was a little hard to come by.  As discussed earlier, at the time most of the colonial powers used an economic system known as mercantilism, which basically held the view that countries should maximize the value of their exports while minimizing the value of their imports, insulating themselves from foreign trade via taxes, the subsidization of domestic industries, and the establishment of overseas colonies.  With regards to said colonies, they were largely to be viewed as sources for importing raw materials otherwise not available and captive markets for the export of manufactured goods.  As you can imagine, this had all sorts of negative consequences for the colonies, especially as they grew in size and began to develop their own complex economies.  They were pretty much being forced to constantly run a trade deficit, which made it extremely difficult to maintain a supply of hard currency which were needed for day-to-day transactions.

Throughout the colonial period, the Thirteen Colonies, despite their growing size and economic importance, never had enough hard currency to go around, forcing many people within the colonies to rely on the bartering system, which doesn’t sound all that bad until you actually try to do transactions with a bunch of different people, some of whom often don’t need whatever the hell you might have on you at that given time.  Now for the southern colonies this was annoying but not the end of the world given their cash crops were in high demand, meaning that the crops themselves could be used as a form of currency in a pinch, but it left New England and the middle colonies pretty well royally fucked.  The problem was so bad that the most common hard currency in the Thirteen Colonies was not the British pound, but rather the Spanish dollar, brought in by New England merchants.  At the time most international trade was done via the Spanish dollar, which thanks to the constant influx of gold and silver into Spain from the New World made it one of the most widely available and stable currencies in the world, even when Spain itself was constantly teetering on the edge of collapse.    

In 1690, Massachusetts became the first colony to begin issuing paper money.  Needing funds to finance its militia during King William’s War, they began paying for goods and services via bills of credit, which given the lack of currency could not be exchanged for silver or gold coins but could be used to pay taxes owed to the colony or purchase of unclaimed land.  This proved rather successful in not just financing the war effort, but also solving the whole currency issue, so much so that by the 1730s pretty much all of the colonies were using some kind of similar system.  Unfortunately, while this made day to day life easier, it created a real economic cluster fuck when it came to trade.  Though equivalent to a British pound when being used to pay taxes or buy unclaimed land, and fairly stable for transactions within the colony that issued them, the value could otherwise vary wildly based upon all sorts of assumption regarding how many notes had been issued, expected tax collections, supply and demand of unclaimed land, and other such factors.  This created a fucked up situation where the notes of each colony held different values, which made transactions using the notes across colonial borders or the Atlantic confusing and risky.  However, due to many colonists having literally no other currency, often British investors and merchants were forced to take the bills in payment of debts or receive nothing at all. 

The use of bills of credit as currency really only worked when the amount of notes issues were similar to the number of bills being retired, otherwise the bills in circulation would lose value and inflation would set in.  This was especially a problem in New England, where due to bordering French Quebec they were constantly in conflict throughout the early and mid-eighteenth century.  Since Britain gave little to no support, viewing it as being each colonies responsibility to see after its own defense, the result was the New England colonies issued far more bills than they could realistically retire, resulting in a dramatic fall in value, eventually becoming so bad that the British government stepped in.  In 1751, scared shitless over the possible consequences of British investors and merchants losing a shit ton of money, the British government passed a law to regulate the use of bills of credit in the New England colonies.  The colonies were given a cash bailout to redeem the excess bills, bills could not be used for private transactions, and new bills had to be retired within two years of issue.

Despite the bailout, the new law caused a significant economic recession in New England.  Merchants went deeper into debt, many farmers were forced to sell part of their land to pay off loans, public works were abandoned, and economic growth sputtered.  The only thing which kept the regional economy afloat was the New England merchant fleet, though even with it economic growth would not return to levels seen in the earlier half of the century until after the American Revolution.        

American History - Rum Runners

Throughout the majority of the colonial period, Britain and the other major colonial powers utilized an economic system known as mercantilism, which basically saw the best bet to economic prosperity being keeping everyone else out of your shit via the strict control of trade.  In the latter half of the seventeenth century, in an attempt to get out from under the thumb of the Dutch who controlled global trade at the time, Britain passed a series of laws collectively known as the Navigation Acts.  These laws required that all exports of European goods to the British colonies and exports of cash crops from the colonies must all be shipped through Britain aboard British owned vessels.  As you can probably imagine this was a pretty fucking sweet deal for British merchants in that it restricted competition, allowing them to buy colonial goods at cheaper prices while selling manufactured goods to the colonies at elevated prices.  It was also pretty sweet for the British government given they could more easily collect taxes on imports and exports.  However, it completely sucked donkey balls for the colonists, who found themselves on the short end of the stick no matter which way you looked at it.  Furthermore, to add insult to injury, further British laws also restricted the manufacture and export of certain goods from the colonies in order to protect similar industries in Britain itself.

Now while for the southern colonies and the British Caribbean this all was a bit of a pain in the ass, overall it wasn’t the end of the world.  After all, the cash crops they grew were in high demand in Europe.  However, the same could not be said of the middle colonies and New England, whose main exports at the time were lumber, fish, grain, and cheese, for which Britain and the rest of Europe had a rather finite demand.  Luckily, the Navigation Acts also fucked over the Dutch, which created a need to build more merchant vessels, which New England, with its shipyards and ready supply of lumber, was in an excellent position to provide.  Shifting to building merchant vessels, they at first sold them to British merchants, but soon after began to realize they could make even more money if they set up their own merchant companies.  Using capital from well-to-do British investors, these new merchant companies began hauling lumber and food south to the Caribbean where such things were in high demand, trading with not only the British islands, but also the French and Dutch and anybody else willing to pay because why the hell not.  Given the shortage of hard currency in the colonies, most of these islands paid with sugar, which the New England merchants were more than happy to take since they could sell it for a good price in Britain.  However, first they had to take it back to New York City and Boston in order to take advantage of a loophole in the laws requiring sugar only be imported from British colonies. 

As you can probably imagine, this royally pissed off the British Caribbean islands and the British merchants who traded with them, both of whom found themselves losing money.  As established businesses usually do when such things happen, they went bitching to the government which at the close of the seventeenth century passed several new laws meant to close the loopholes and tamp down on the shenanigans of the New England merchants.  However, instead they found new loopholes and shenanigans.  At the time, the French Caribbean islands were awash in molasses, a byproduct of sugar production which was used to make rum.  France had recently banned the import of rum in order to protect the domestic brandy industry, which put the islands in a bit of a pickle.  Still needing food and lumber, they were more than happy to sell molasses to the New England merchants at rock bottom prices.

First developed in the Caribbean in the mid-seventeenth century, rum had become popular throughout the colonies, Europe, and West Africa both for the obvious reasons and as an additive to water to help make it safer to drink, a common use of many liquors at the time given most people didn’t want to die of literally shitty diseases.  Being rather clever fucks, and again using investment from well-to-do British asshats, the New England merchants quickly set up a large rum distilling industry in New England, which thanks to the ample availability of cheap French molasses and lumber for barrels, quickly came to dominate the global rum trade.  As a result, New England merchant ships began popping up throughout western Europe, the Mediterranean, and even south along the coast of Africa where they became a major player in the Atlantic slave trade.   

As you can probably guess, this also pissed off the British Caribbean islands and the British merchants given previously they had been the top exporter and seller of rum.  Not liking such competition, they again bitched to the government, who again stepped in to get them to shut up, passing a new law in 1733 which put a tax on all foreign produced molasses imported into Britain or its colonies.  Given this would have pretty much crashed the New England economy, the merchants there just kind of said fuck off, refusing to pay the tax, smuggling in molasses, and bribing customs officials to look the other way.  Britain made various attempts to stop the smuggling, but failing again and again over a ten year period, finally just kind of gave up, which in the long term probably wasn’t all that great of an idea given it gave the sense, especially in New England, that British laws were a bit of a joke.  Over the next several decades, despite technically being illegal, the New England rum trade continued to grow.      

American History - Feminist Seeds

For the women immigrating across the Atlantic and those born to the colonies, there was little question that they were going to live the same lives as their mothers, their grandmothers, and so on and so forth.  Given the lack of formal education available to women at the time, there was little reason for them to think their lives could be any different.  Though the purveyors of new ideas in what became known as the Great Enlightenment did include the need for greater education and equality for women, what opportunities were created were solely available to the aristocracy and the wealthiest of merchant families, and even for them only somewhat utilized.  For most women, the only real opportunity in the world was finding a good husband, their role largely limited to praying for his success while making babies and running the household.  However, whether they knew it or not, the New World meant new possibilities.

The beginning of the shift towards equality for colonial women didn’t begin with high minded speeches or ideals, but rather with economic expediency.  From the day the first settlers arrived in Virginia and Massachusetts, the Thirteen Colonies faced a labor shortage, which only grew worse over time.  Though the Puritans in New England managed to maintain traditional gender roles, women in other regions, many of whom were indentured servants, had to take on a myriad of roles formerly viewed as the solely those of men, such as farming, weaving, tailoring, and brewing.  Though such labor shortages eventually grew less over time thanks to prodigious baby making, immigration, and the import of slaves, the knowledge that such jobs could be done by women did not wane, and they were never completely pushed back out of them.  As cities began to grow and skilled tradesmen began to manufacture and ply goods, their wives worked right alongside them, learning the skills from their husbands which they had in turn learned during their apprenticeships.  Some of these husbands, in order to gain the full benefit of their wife’s free labor, also taught their wives to read, write, and do arithmetic, which they in turn taught to both their sons and daughters.

Similarly, the first changes in the legal system towards giving women more rights were also more economic than altruistic in nature.  For much of seventeenth century, there were fewer women than men in the colonies, which gave women the ability to be more choosey about whom they married.  This helped them gain a higher standard of living than their European counterparts which in turn led to a lower mortality rate, mainly by cutting back on the number of women who died via childbirth or shitting oneself to death diseases.  At the same time, especially along the frontier, an increased number of men died young, usually via accidents or the natives getting tired of their crap, leaving a not insignificant number of widows.  Now in normal circumstances widows would be quickly married off to some other asshat, but at certain times, such as when a war was being fought, this was not so easy, leaving the community at large to bear the burden.  In many areas it became such a problem that the colonial governments changed the laws so that widows could inherit a portion of their husband’s estate and retain control over their children not yet of age.  Many of these widows used this money to set up businesses, boarding houses, inns, and taverns being popular options, while others continued farming.  For many, the purchase or retention of slaves to help with the labor formerly supplied by their dead husbands is what allowed them to remain independent.

However, though this was all very well and good for widows and the wives of tradesmen, widespread change for all colonial women didn’t begin until the religious revival known as the Great Awakening.  At the time, women tended to be more religious than men, what with the world they found themselves in sucking quite a bit, and the evangelical preachers targeted them specifically to help spread the good word.  Though barred from preaching, women were encouraged to monitor the moral behavior of their neighbors, which wasn’t all that great, but also to form women’s groups to aid in their introspective journey to finding the righteous path.  Though not what they were planned to be used for, it was in these groups that many women found a new avenue to vent their frustrations with the lives they led.  It was also in these groups that many women learned to read and write, taught by those who already knew how.  The rapid growth in literacy amongst women led to a sharp increase in the number and variety of women who kept diaries, wrote books and poetry, and read things that weren’t the bible.  A new type of literature, by women and for women, began to take hold.  It was in this expansion of knowledge and the sharing of perspectives that the seeds of change began to be planted.