Edwards begins by narrating the emergence of paper money in the American colonies, beginning with Massachusetts in 1690. His account emphasizes the temporary character of colonial “bills of credit” as a medium of exchange—but it largely overlooks their fiscal implications. At the same time, he traces the development of monetary institutions on both sides of the Atlantic and the growing unease within the British government regarding colonial monetary practices. Edwards presents figures such as Governor Francis Fauquier and Wills Hill as key intermediaries in shaping British policy, particularly through Hill’s memorandum to the Privy Council, which influenced imperial monetary thinking for decades.
According to Edwards, differing conceptions of money between Britain and the colonies lay at the heart of the imperial conflict. As he presents it, the main differences rely on the “temporary” nature of colonial money versus the “permanent” nature of imperial money, and the fact that colonial money, in his account, had no link to precious metals. Yet these distinctions, while rhetorically powerful, ultimately collapse under scrutiny. The divergences he identifies appears less substantial than he suggests, though—a point that becomes clearer when one considers the broader economic context. Both sides of the Atlantic were, in practice, grappling with the same fundamental constraint: the scarcity and high cost of precious metals.
Edwards goes on to attribute the escalating crisis primarily to philosophical disagreements over money. The prohibition on colonial emissions of bills of credit and the Stamp Act—particularly its requirement that taxes be paid in silver—are presented as central provocations. The colonies’ resistance, in this account, stemmed less from taxation itself than from the monetary form that taxation took. While this narrative captures an important dimension of colonial grievances, it remains analytically thin. Apart from John Dickinson’s reflections on money and property, the reader is offered little theoretical guidance for interpreting these events.
Indeed, Dickinson’s arguments, as well as those of British policymakers, are presented without critical evaluation. Both sides, in my view, misunderstood the nature of money—Dickinson, for thinking that money in the social and technological conditions of those times could prescind from an ultimate form of payment in precious metals; the British officials, for thinking that money was only the monetary base. Edwards suggests that imperial monetary reforms were partly designed to integrate the colonies more fully into British commercial networks, particularly as markets for goods associated with the East India Company. He writes that “the reform of American money was largely justified as part of a project to make the Atlantic colonists more reliable customers for British merchants.” Yet this explanation strains credulity when one considers the limited absorptive capacity of the colonial economy relative to the vast production of India.