"An Art So Diabolical, and So Ruinous to the Nation": Counterfeiting, Sovereignty, and US-Mexican Relations in the 1830s

This article examines a now-forgotten incident when thousands of counterfeit Mexican copper coins were found aboard a US ship in the port of Veracruz, igniting a diplomatic row between the neighboring republics. The case, which unfolded as tensions mounted between the Mexican government and Anglo-American settlers in Texas, raised fears in Mexico that US citizens were working to destabilize Mexico's government. The article contributes to the history of U.S-Mexican relations in the lead-up to the Mexican-American War by highlighting an event that helped shape official and public opinion in both nations yet took place far from the Texas borderlands. It also contributes to recent scholarship on the history of money, showing that the production and circulation of currency, including petty copper coins, was central to how Mexicans conceived of their nation's sovereignty in the first half of the nineteenth century.