Easy Money: American Puritans and the Invention of Modern Currency

Explores the history of legal tender currency in North America, focusing in particular on the circumstances surrounding its invention by seventeenth-century Puritans in Massachusetts. Outlines a theoretical framework of money, covering the functioning of various types of money and the pressures and abilities that led to inventions of new forms of money. Describes English society and its money and credit from the late sixteenth century to 1692. Surveys money in colonies before the Massachusetts Bay Company relocated to America. Summarizes the period when Charles I ruled without Parliament and the resulting Great Puritan Migration that founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Investigates monetary inventions in Massachusetts and Virginia in the first half of the seventeenth century. Considers the period of constitutional battles in England from 1640 to 1660 and how Massachusetts, Virginia, and Maryland tried to use the opportunity to achieve more financial autonomy. Highlights the power of government over paper money during the few years before the Glorious Revolution. Provides a biography of Elisha Hutchinson in order to illustrate the background that was typical of Massachusetts legislators. Analyzes the immediate historical background for the invention of legal tender money. Details the unconventional features of legal tender money and significant developments in its legal status in 1692. Compares the Financial Revolution in 1690s England to that which took place in Massachusetts. Goldberg is Senior Faculty in the Department of Management and Economics at the Open University of Israel. Index.