The Currency Act of 1764 in Imperial-Colonial Relations, 1764-1776

H HISTORIANS of the American Revolution have written much about the issues between Great Britain and its American colonies in the critical period between 1763 and I776. Understandably, they have concentrated upon those areas where the conflict was most dramatic, upon the omnipresent questions of Parliamentary taxation and the tightening of the mercantile system. Consequently, issues of lesser moment have been pushed into the background, and their impact upon the Revolutionary crisis has never been adequately explored. Such is the case with the imperial prohibition by the Currency Act of April i9, i764 (4 Geo. III, c. 34), of the emission of further legal tender paper money in the colonies south of New England. In many of those colonies that act was an underlying source of discontent for much of the last decade of the colonial period.'