VERY neat read in the FT yesterdayVERY neat read in the FT yesterday

Beautiful artwork... the graphic elites get extra points for that

aaaah, the good old times:

In the early 1750s, the surveyors Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson sent a map of Virginia and Maryland to a printer in London. Virginia was still a tobacco colony, and their map shows a fastidious attention to every creek on the rivers that floated tobacco into the Atlantic: the Rappahannock, the York and the James. An inset shows a scene at a harbour: gentlemen negotiate the terms of trade while enslaved Black men serve wine and roll hogshead barrels of tobacco on to an Atlantic ship.

ah yes, lovely:

Much earlier than in Britain, colonial laws allowed notes to be transferred with a signature to someone else. Credit was tied to status and personal reputation. The colonies did not have inherited titles, but they did have gentlemen, men who lived from their assets, drank imported Madeira wine and read English works on courtesy and conduct. A gentleman might have been expected to extend credit as a patron, but he would have expected to receive it as well.

"We think of wealth now as a portfolio, a collection of impersonal financial assets.""We think of wealth now as a portfolio, a collection of impersonal financial assets."

Under British rule, Americans didn’t have chartered joint-stock companies or even banks; what they thought of as wealth is visible on Fry and Jefferson’s map: land, personal credit and human beings.
For the American colonists, money sat mostly on shop ledgers and promissory notes. Death was a moment of settlement, and ads in colonial newspapers often urged readers to clear all their credits and debts with the dead.

Land was the single largest source of wealth in all colonies. That share was higher in the scattered townships of New England and the wheat and rye belts of the Middle Colonies. The southern tobacco colonies of Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina were much wealthier, but land itself was a smaller portion of that wealth

Difference being the slaves, vastly more prominent (as a share of total wealth) in the South. Shockingly:

By the beginning of the 18th century, Virginia had become a Crown colony and had tightened its Black Code, ensuring that the children of enslaved people remained enslaved. Such codes turned slavery into a form of intergenerational wealth, helping among others Peter Jefferson’s son Thomas, who wrote the Declaration of Independence,

Also: land was "alienable," thus suitable as collateral for creditors:

By the middle of the 18th century, land in the colonies was also alienable — it could be seized by creditors. This made credit easier to get in the colonies, since both land and enslaved people could serve as collateral.

"What they held instead was credit, the basic form of liquidity for any purchase.""What they held instead was credit, the basic form of liquidity for any purchase."

It's what usually happens in money-scarce environments (not the current idea of limited-bitcoin-supply, but LITERALLY not having any monetary media around). Clever humans, we make up our own. Though this bit of background had somehow passed me by/slipped my mind:

"America’s constitution forbade the states from issuing the bills of credit that were so useful to farmers and the poor for money. Instead, America’s new states began chartering banks to issue notes and deposits.""America’s constitution forbade the states from issuing the bills of credit that were so useful to farmers and the poor for money. Instead, America’s new states began chartering banks to issue notes and deposits."

https://archive.md/mYd5l