Episode Details

Before the U.S. dollar existed, colonists paid with wampum, tobacco, beaver pelts, and Spanish silver. This episode unpacks the chaotic, experimental, and sometimes disastrous origins of early American money, from a cash-starved colonial economy to the first government-backed paper money in the Western world.

We explore mercantilism and the colonial trade deficit, the Massachusetts pine tree shillings, the Spanish dollar, and the 1690 bills of credit. Then we follow the British Currency Acts, the collapse of the Continental, British counterfeiting, Robert Morris and the Bank of North America, and how financial trauma shaped the Constitution's rules on money.

• Why the colonies relied on commodity money like wampum and tobacco
• How the Spanish piece of eight gave Americans the word dollar
• How Massachusetts issued paper bills of credit in 1690 and why Pennsylvania's land bank held its value
• How overprinting and British counterfeiting made the Continental not worth a continental
• How Robert Morris, Alexander Hamilton, and the Constitution responded to the currency crisis