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Historian Andrew David Edwards presents his new book, "Money and the Making of the American Revolution." Registration requested, but not required.
Your registration at the button is appreciated, but not required for this event.
About the Book (from the publisher):
American money and American democracy have always been in tension, pitting political equality against economic inequality. In "Money and the Making of the American Revolution," Andrew David Edwards shows how this struggle emerged in America’s founding era. Everyone knows that the founders waged a revolt against taxation without representation. Edwards shows that the dispute over taxes was really a dispute over money: what it was, who could make it, and how to keep it from being used at the expense of the colonists in North America. The colonial rebels refocused their resistance on democratic, local control—defending the power they had used to make money for themselves.
Edwards’s narrative spans four continents, linking the problems of money and revolt in early America to the transatlantic slave trade, the disastrous mismanagement of the East India Company in India, and violence against Native Americans. His analysis emerges from the story itself, through the lives of individuals ranging from John Blackwell, Oliver Cromwell’s one-time war treasurer, to Thomas Paine, the impassioned pamphleteer of the American Revolution. Edwards argues that as the republican vision of an agrarian, independent monetary system faded, the leaders of the Revolution tied the nation to capitalism and imperialism at its founding. The colonists may have won the battle for representation, but the money that underpinned European empire had established a stronghold in the new republic. "Money and the Making of the American Revolution" offers both an ambitious new interpretation of the Revolution and a fascinating story about the power of economic ideas.
About the Author:
Andrew David Edwards is lecturer in early American history in the School of History at the University of St Andrews. He is a historian of early America, capitalism and money. He received my doctorate from Princeton University in 2018 to become the inaugural career development fellow in the global history of capitalism at Brasenose College, Oxford. Before joining the School of History, he was a Sawyer fellow at the New School for Social Research in New York City, working on the project "Currency and Empire: Race, Monetary Policy and Power." My research has appeared in Past & Present, The Journal of American History, Law & Social Inquiry, and L’Atelier du Centre de recherches historiques.
Public Humanities programs are presented with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this programming do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
AGE GROUP: | Teens | Kids | All Ages |
EVENT TYPE: | Humanities | *Registration Requested |
TAGS: | NEH |
