A sweeping new book portrays the Revolution as a struggle over competing monetary systems, rather than political liberty alone.



Andrew David Edwards, in Money and the Making of the American Revolution, offers what his publisher describes as “a new interpretation of the American Revolution as a transformative monetary contest.” While many books and articles have examined the monetary arrangements of the American colonies and the financing of the Revolution, Edwards shows a solid command of much of this scholarship as well as the primary sources. While at times his writing can be eloquent, the book is necessarily ponderous and dense. Unfortunately, Edwards’ understanding of the nature of money and finance can be superficial at best.

Building upon the earlier contention of historian Joseph Albert Ernst that British restrictions on colonial paper money were a major grievance leading to the Revolution, Edwards goes further. He contends that the colonies and the mother country had fundamentally distinct monetary systems, and the resulting war was primarily a conflict over money rather than taxes. Moreover, because Americans had to ultimately abandon their reliance on the Continental currency and instead turn to foreign loans in specie (gold and silver coins) and create the Bank of North America, they won their independence only at the cost of losing control over their money. Edwards then finds conflict over the appropriate monetary system still lingering domestically into the Confederation period until its final settlement embodied in the Constitution.

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