Free Paper with Annotated Bibliography on Colonial America

Humpage, Owen. "Paper Money and Inflation in Colonial America." Economic Commentary 5 (2015): 06.

The article talks about the colonists first started using their money as a unit of account in the mid-1600s. The government would ask people to pay their taxes using the bills and when issuance of the statements was too high, or the government failed to tax them out of circulation, there was inflation. Additionally, to draw the much-needed specie into the colonies, merchants offered a higher price for silver and gold coins; more than the British pound prices. The article provides useful information for understanding how people traded without the actual circulation of money.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Durivage, J., & Priest, C. (2014). The Stamp Act and the political origins of American legal and economic institutions. S. Cal. L. Rev., 88, 875.

Durivage & Priest (2014) introduces the denominations of money used in different parts of colonial America. In the colonies, money had denominations like pounds, shillings, and pence. Different territories had a different value. The province of Massachusetts Bay made the first authorized paper money in the early 1690s which were used by the military to pay for their expenditure during King William's war. Colony after colony followed Massachusetts' example and started using their own paper money to sponsor military activities. The information from the article is useful in understanding the origin of paper economy and how the stamp act influenced the economy.

McCusker, John J., and Russell R. Menard. The Economy of British America, 1607-1789. UNC Press Books, 2014.

The study reports that the economy was in such a limbo that the colonists had to use other commodities as money, so they turned to Spanish coins. Colonists used the Spanish dollar to trade even though goods were initially valued in British pounds. All throughout the 1600s tobacco leaves were used as commodity money but were substituted with tobacco warehouse receipts due to their lack of durability. The receipts served as promissory notes where bearers could claim the actual quantity of tobacco; they circulated in the trade as money. As tobacco receipts could not be divided, they quickly became inadequate stores of value due to unstable supply of tobacco. The article will help in understanding the challenges associated with non-monetary currencies.

Nelson, William E. The Common Law in Colonial America: The Chesapeake and New England, 1660-1750. Vol. 3. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Nelson describes how trade took place when transactions became almost solely dependent on barter trade where; he says that wealthy traders extended credit to others out of lack of choice. The result was that an individual could end up having a lot owed to them on debt and that business-wise did not make any sense. Lucky for them colonial creditors could equate the debts to British pounds and colonial currencies even though they were not easily available. The article provides useful information for understanding how the introduction of money eased the payment of debts.

Reich, Jerome R. Colonial America. Routledge, 2016.

The article analyzes the paper money and inflation in colonial America, and it reiterates the shortage of cash during that time. The colonists were forced to resort to other methods of trade that of course was less efficient. Barter trade was conventional especially in the countryside although people had no choice but to trade for goods they did not exactly want or need because that was the only way a transaction would be complete. The article is relevant because it explores the tobacco receipts in warehouses used as units of account. In addition, one get to understand how business owners sometimes gave "shop notes" that were used as currencies of trade in specific stores.

Tindall, George Brown, and David E. Shi. America: A narrative history. WW Norton & Company, 2016.

After the introduction and success of fiat money in 1690, the research paper explains that the now state of Massachusetts issued quite some paper currency for the expedition during Queen Anne's war between 1702 and 1713. During this period, the amount of paper currency in New England's trade increased sharply thus causing inflation. Historians took the modest rise to mean that traders were willing to risk underlying inflation to get a hold of the specie whose supply had now become scarcer with the war. Partly, deflation was an indicator of the relationship between a paper currency, the medium of exchange in New England and the specie which was the global currency. Any colony that issued fiat tended to lose specie. The loss counterpoises the fiat-money growth and minimizes the consequences of an inflation of the release of the paper currency. The article will be used for understanding the importance of controlling the amount of money in circulation in an economy.

Primary sources

Beattie, Andrew. "The history of money: From barter to banknotes." Investopedia. Online http://www. investopedia. com/articles/07/roots_of_mone y. asp (2016).

Ernst, Joseph. Money and politics in America, 1755-1775: a study in the Currency act of 1764 and the political economy of revolution. UNC Press Books, 2014.

Franklin, Benjamin. A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of Paper Currency. Arsalan Ahmed, 2015.

Tindall, George Brown, and David E. Shi. America: A narrative history. WW Norton & 1660-1750. Vol. 3. Oxford University Press, 2016.Secondary sources

HT, Dickinson. "the Failure of conciliation: Britain and the American colonies 1763-1783." The Kyoto economic review79, no. 2 (2010): 91-109.

Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt. The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States, 1638-1870. B&R Samizdat Express, 2014.

Durivage, Justin, and Claire Priest. "The Stamp Act and the political origins of American legal and economic institutions." S. Cal. L. Rev. 88 (2014): 875.

McCusker, John J., and Russell R. Menard. The Economy of British America, 1607-1789. UNC Press Books, 2014.

Nelson, William E. The Common Law in Colonial America: The Chesapeake and New England, Company. Rev. 52 (2016): 825.

Reich, Jerome R. Colonial America. Routledge, 2016.