Hello and welcome to a history of the United States. Episode 127, the Currency Act.

Firstly, I'd like to begin with a production note. As I'm sure you're all aware, the past month has

been highly disruptive for just about every single person on the earth, thanks to the COVID-19

virus. This has meant some

certain changes in most of our lives. I'm extremely lucky in the fact that my job allows me to

work from home, but it has meant that I've had to reorganise my flat into a home office of sorts, which has meant that my studio, as it

existed, well, no longer exists. So part of what I've been doing over the past few weeks is resetting

up everything. So this is my first ever recording using an Apple, my first ever using garage band. So it's a bit of a new

setup and it may take a little bit of time for me to, A, know what I'm doing and the sound

might be a little bit different from what you're used to, but hopefully it should still be

as tolerable as my voice normally is. Well, anyway, let's just get on with it.

So this is episode 127, The Currency Act. In our last episode, we began to look at the financial

problems that were affecting the British in the years after the seven years' war. While the

Grenville ministry made efforts at raising revenue on the British side, the side attacks being a particularly fierce battle.

They started to look at the Americas. It was decided that the American military would be expanded, which would allow for the large officer class to be retained. The first measure was the

American Duties Act, more commonly known as the Sugar Act, an exercise in mercantilism that was

bound to meet with colonial resistance. Almost simultaneously, in 1764, the Currency Act was passed. The Currency Act was a reaction to

financial practices that had occurred in the colonies over the course of the war. In order to finance

the conflict, colonies had produced large amounts of paper money. In the north, these

currencies were backed by gold and silver, but in Virginia, they were backed by nothing. The idea

being that future taxes could remove the notes from active circulation. The exchange rate between Virginia's currency and British

pound sterling gradually increased and distanced itself from the official exchange rate.

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