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

该项目将首次研究代币，而不是政府铸造的货币，如何使英国经济的工业化及其在与革命和拿破仑法国的战争中的生存。世纪的经济缺乏足够的小面额货币作为交换媒介在快速工业化和战争的新背景。本文将探讨一种非官方的交换媒介是如何产生的，以适应当地的工资支付和小规模的消费主义，提高工业化地区的经济效率和分配速度。最近在英国对当地货币进行的实验，如“布里斯托英镑”，以及非官方的数字货币，如比特币，给这个项目带来了当代的共鸣，并将为这些实验的潜在影响提供信息。尽管它的重要性，没有关于代币经济的工作，关于交换和工业工作的系统，现有的史学完全致力于代币，因为它们与货币政策和钱币学有关。

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.