The Wild Card: Colonial Paper Money in French North America, 1685 to 1719

The wild card: colonial paper money in French North America, 1685 to 1719

European Review of Economic History ◽

10.1093/ereh/heab014 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Bryan P Cutsinger ◽

Vincent Geloso ◽

Mathieu Bédard

Keyword(s):

North America ◽

Price Level ◽

Playing Card ◽

Legal Tender ◽

Paper Money ◽

Wild Card

Abstract We use the first French experiment with playing card money in its colony of Quebec between 1685 and 1719 to illustrate the link between legal tender restrictions and the price level. Initially, the quantity of playing card money and the government’s poor fiscal condition appears to have had little effect on prices. After 1705, however, the playing card money became inflationary. We argue that this was caused by the government’s increased enforcement of the legal tender laws and the adoption of a redemption plan intended to remove the notes from circulation.

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Some Attempts at Imperial Co-Operation During the Reign of Queen Anne

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society ◽

10.2307/3678409 ◽

1927 ◽

Vol 10 ◽

pp. 171-194

Author(s):

W. T. Morgan

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

North America ◽

American Revolution ◽

Paper Money ◽

Fundamental Causes ◽

Mother Country ◽

Sea Power ◽

Early Eighteenth Century ◽

The Military

Recent historical investigations tend to push the fundamental causes of the American Revolution farther and farther back into the eighteenth century. It is, therefore, passing strange that the significance of the Canadian expeditions of the first decade of that century should have been neglected. These projects played an important rôle in bringing about a friendly co-operation between the continental colonies and the mother-country; they were no unimportant part of the military and naval phases of the war of the Spanish Succession; and they raised in a pointed way the whole question of sea power. In addition, the expeditions were used as pawns by the English in the diplomatic game, which eventually culminated in the treaty of Utrecht; they showed in a clear way the entire problem of imperial defence, as well as some of the tendencies in British and French imperialism in the early eighteenth century. Furthermore, such attempts at co-operation between colonists and mother-country revealed the superlative importance attached to colonial commerce by each of them, and helped create that most vexatious question of colonial paper money. Such a joint expedition against the French in North America was not only a contest between Whigs and Tories in England, but it finally became a struggle between the two great Tory rivals of the reign of Queen Anne.

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