Promise to Pay

The Politics and Power of Money in Early America

Katie A. Moore

$190.95

Hardback

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English

University of Chicago Press
19 November 2024

Series: American Beginnings, 1500-1900

An incisive account of the crucial role money played in the formation and development of British North America.

Promise to Pay follows America's first paper money—the ""bills of credit"" of British North America—from its seventeenth-century origins as a means of war finance to its pivotal role in catalyzing the American Revolution. Katie A. Moore combs through treasury records, account books, and the bills themselves to tell a new story of money's origins that challenges economic orthodoxy and mainstream histories. Promise to Pay shows how colonial governments imposed paper bills on settler communities through existing labor and kinship relations, their value secured by thousands of individual claims on the public purse—debts—and the state's promise to take them back as payment for taxes owed. Born into a world of hierarchy and deference, early American money eroded old social ties and created new asymmetries of power, functioning simultaneously as a ticket to the world of goods, a lifeline for those on the margins, and a tool of imperial domination.

Grounded in sustained engagement with scholarship from multiple disciplines, Promise to Pay breathes new life into old debates and offers an incisive account of the centrality of money in the politics and conflicts of empire, community, and everyday life.

By: Katie A. Moore
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 540g
ISBN: 9780226835815
ISBN 10: 0226835812
Series: American Beginnings, 1500-1900
Pages: 308
Publication Date: 19 November 2024
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Katie A. Moore is assistant professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara.