"A Just and Honest Valuation": Money and Value in Colonial America, 1690-1750

The first half of the eighteenth century was a period of economic transformation for Britain’s North American colonies, during which colonial settlers were active agents in an increasingly complex Atlantic World of goods, credit, and labor. At the same time, colonists maintained traditional moral tenets and such social norms as communal obligation, economic fairness, and stewardship over the poor. In the face of widespread economic change, how did early Americans preserve their worldview? This project argues that colonists mediated economic change within existing moral and social frameworks by re-imagining the origins and nature of value as extrinsic, a conceptual shift reflected in their use of paper money.