The Provincial Tokens: Exchange and Industry in Late-Georgian Britain

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This project will provide the first study of how tokens, rather than government minted currency, enabled theindustrialization of the British economy and its survival during the wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France. The18th century economy lacked a sufficiency of small denomination currency to act as a medium of exchange in the newcontext of rapid industrialization and war. This thesis will explore how an unofficial medium of exchange arose toaccommodate local wage payments and small scale consumerism, increasing economic efficacy and speed ofdistribution in industrialized regions. Recent experimentation with local currencies in Britain, such as the 'Bristol Pound',as well as unofficial digital currency, like Bitcoin, gives this project contemporary resonance and will be informative ingauging the potential impact of such experiments. Despite its significance, there is no work on the token economyregarding systems of exchange and industrial work, with the existing historiography entirely devoted to the tokens asthey relate to monetary policy and numismatics.