Amidst the pressure for the reform of money and currency in the British Atlantic after 1763 were several broader proposals for imperial paper currencies and colonial monetary unions that would help knit together colonial territories throughout the North America and even the Caribbean into a cohesive whole during a moment of ambitious imperial reforms. Aaron Graham’s new book on Bills of Union brings these proposals together for the first time to show how thinkers and writers on empire, currency and finance drew on financial practices, precedents and principles from across the British Atlantic to present their own visions of monetary union and the past, present and hypothetical futures of empire after 1763.

Hosted by ERC The European Fiscal-Military System, 1530-1870 project at the University of Oxford, Aaron will be discussing Bills of Union and monetary and financial thought and theory, the roots of American monetary policy, and the links between finance, empire, politics, reform and revolution, with Peter Wilson (Oxford), Stephen Conway (UCL) and Erica Charters (Oxford).