The article aims at analyzing the monetary system of the Dutch colony New Netherland. It first carves out the formal structure of the colony's currency system and then goes on to show that the liberalization of New Netherland's economy exacerbated contradictions lurking inside the currency system and thereby fueled political conflicts among the West India Company, colonists, and Native Americans. By analyzing different strategies to deal with this situation, the article proposes that the contradictions could not be resolved, as their cause—economic liberalization—was irreversible. This analysis sets the stage for discussion of a possibility that scholars have not yet explored: Iroquois could have partly shaped the monetization of New Netherland and thus could have been accountable for its failing monetary policy by deliberately controlling the amount of sewant in circulation.

Seventeenth-century colonial North America, dual currency system, Iroquois, money, New Netherland, sewant/wampum
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Copyright 2015 by American Society for Ethnohistory
2015
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