The Transformation of Debt: The Paper State and Paper Economy in Early America

Abstract

Debt underpins the modern global economy. Debt is also intimately tied to the function and form of the modern state. As a form of capital, debt is a combination of several legal modules and legal qualities that allow holders of debt to secure a future pecuniary return. The development of these legal modules and legal qualities may be observed in the emerging commercial society of the United States of America in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. By tracing the transformation of debt over this time period in the USA, we may gain insight into how debt, the economy, and the state could be re-envisioned for the future.