Central Monetary Services Without Centralization
Stephen Colwell and the Political Economy of Nineteenth-Century US Monetary Architecture
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4296662 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ariel Ron (0000-0003-1077-1987, Southern Methodist University), Sofia Valeonti (American University of Paris and the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, PHARE, 147 rue de Grenelle, 75007, Paris, France ([email protected])) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 57 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 571-605 |
| Publication date | 2025-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History of Political Economy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-2702 • E-ISSN: 1527-1919 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/00182702-11857058 |
| OpenAlex | W4409325438 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 56 |
In the 1830s and 1840s, the United States repudiated its national bank and established the so-called Independent Treasury, which dissociated federal fiscal operations from state-chartered banks of issue and seemingly relinquished any federal role in managing the currency. Basic questions about the monetary system's stability, quantitative sufficiency, and geographic scope persisted for the rest of the century and into the next. This article examines the work of Stephen Colwell, an industrialist and political economist, whose Ways and Means of Payment (1859) represents one of the nineteenth century's most comprehensive and theoretically sophisticated works of monetary analysis by an American. Colwell's investigations led him to endorse a government-issued paper money and a national clearinghouse to facilitate domestic trade, with the ultimate aim of promoting national economic development. His recommendations anticipated key features of the Federal Reserve System that was created in 1913. This article reconstructs Colwell's monetary theory in its historical context as a case study of how American political economists and policymakers thought about the relationships between monetary architecture, the state, and economic development in the formative period of American economic ascent
Archaeology · Economic history · Economics · Keynesian economics · Monetary economics · Monetary policy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · American History and Culture · Architecture · Economic Theory and Institutions · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Law
Corporations and American Democracy
Yankee Leviathan
The Many Panics of 1837
A Revolution in Favor of Government
A Government Out of Sight
British Monetary Orthodoxy in the 1870s
Grassroots Leviathan
Mixed Feelings
Governmental Institutions as Agents of Change
Turning (Into) “The Great Regulating Wheel”
Ruling Passions
The Molding of American Banking; Men and Ideas
Money, Class, and Party
Economic Aspects of the Second Bank of the United States
A Note on the Economic Consequences of the Second Bank of the United States
Rethinking the Jacksonian Economy
The Panic of 1857
A History of Banking in Antebellum America
A Political Response to Industrialism
The U.S. Specie Standard, 1792–1932
The Evolution and Practical Operation of the Gold Settlement Fund
Monetary Policy in the United States
The Fleece and the Loom
The Myth of the “Weak” American State
The Unexceptional State
Postbellum Protection and Commissioner Wells's Conversion to Free Trade
The Development of American Commercial Banking
On Some Classical Monetary Controversies
The Banking School and the Law of Reflux in General
How TRIPs Got Legs
John Fullarton's Law of Reflux and Central Bank Policy
Henry C. Carey's Monetary Thought and American Industrialization in the Greenback Debate
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |