Two years before hunting presumed witches, the Puritan Massachusetts elite invented a new type of money, one that was based on its acceptance by the state as legal tender for taxes rather than its gold content or any type of gold backing.
Centuries later, this form of currency came to dominate the world.
Why did it happen in Massachusetts? The English empire suffocated the renegade colony with regulations on the polity, property and currency. So, as the commercial and intellectual hub of English America, the Puritan colony took it upon itself, and was well-suited, to evade these regulations. Its revolutionary currency of 1690 made this breakthrough into modern currency - probably the least appreciated contribution of colonial Massachusetts to world history.
Bio: Dror Goldberg is a senior faculty member in the Department of Management and Economics at the Open University of Israel. He holds a Ph.D in economics from the University of Rochester and a law degree from Tel Aviv University, and previously worked at Texas A&M University. Dror studies the theory, history and law of money, especially of legal tender currency. He is the author of Easy Money: American Puritans and the Invention of Modern Currency, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2023. To learn more about his research, visit www.drorgoldberg.com
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Image: The only surviving specimen of the first issue of Massachusetts legal tender money. [It's the main part of the original bill, because the bill was vertical.]
Credit: Peabody Essex Museum.