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The E-Sylum: Volume 10, Number 40, October 7, 2007, Article 4 BOOK REVIEW: STEPHEN MIHM'S NATION OF COUNTERFEITERS [Richard Doty of the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution forwarded the following review of a new book on the history of counterfeiting in the U.S. -Editor] 'A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States', by Stephen Mihm (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), $29.95. The Smithsonian Institution has approximately fifteen thousand "obsolete notes" – currency issued by private banks and other entities between 1790 and 1865. I have been working with this collection for more than two decades, have written one book, part of another, and more than two dozen articles about it. I love obsoletes. They are historical, whimsical, very often beautiful – and sometimes suspect. Approximately twenty percent of our notes are bogus in one way or another: fakes of real notes from real banks; pieces from nonexistent banks or bearing designs never employed by legitimate banks; altered bills (whose names and places of issue were erased, then replaced by new ones); and raised notes (whose original denominations were excised, then augmented). One in five pieces of paper: if the proportion of fakes in our collection is borne out by the evidence of other private and public holdings, then the nature of the nineteenth- century American economic miracle begs closer scrutiny. Did people at the time realize how many fakes were in circulation? Did they care? How could they tell good notes from bad? What were the roles of the federal and state governments in all of this? What were the boundaries between genuine and fake? Were they hard and fast, as they are at present? Or were they porous, at times even nonexistent? At bottom, what did nineteenth-century Americans expect from their money? Stephen Mihm's 'A Nation of Counterfeiters' goes far towards answering these and many other questions. Anyone interested in obsolete notes quickly becomes aware of the fakery and flimflam surrounding them – they're part of a collective legend and heritage. But Mihm explains in detail how it all came about, in a fast-paced, well-written narrative featuring a cast of characters ranging from dapper and not-so-dapper crooks, forgers, bunko artists and corruptible policeman to bemused bankers, starving and not-so-starving artists – and the ordinary men and women who put up with and sometimes profited by the monetary chaos surrounding them. His tale embraces an entire continent, from Connecticut to California, and his characters and their wares march in lock step with a larger movement of people, goods, and skills from one coast to the other. As I said, I've worked with this material for many years. But Mihm has delved far more deeply than I, in search of different themes; he has emerged with some truly amazing information. For example, there was a vibrant, enduring counterfeit connection between New England and Upper and Lower Canada: many of the early forgers straddled both sides of a very porous border, posing a headache for understaffed authorities on both sides of an ill-defined line. Moreover, the ubiquitous counterfeit and forgery protectors hawked everywhere at mid-century may have caused more harm than good: they weren't all that helpful – except to forgers, who now knew what to emulate and what to avoid. Most importantly, Mihm penetrates deeply into the nature of "real" and fake money, how the two can sometimes be melded together in the popular imagination, so that anything, as long as it circulates, as long as someone, somewhere, accepts it and passes it on, is just as useful and good as anything else. Some of us had wondered whether this might have been the case; Mihm has confirmed it. His book concludes with the shift from private notes to public paper – the new federal currency brought about by the fiscal exigencies of the Civil War. The advent of the new money altered perceptions of counterfeiting on the part of individuals and their national government. Before, paper currency was a commercial convenience; now, it was something more, a symbol of the nation itself. And while forgery was an unavoidable evil in the first instance, it was an intolerable affront in the second. This is the finest, most readable account of its kind you are ever likely to see. I congratulate Stephen Mihm on an extraordinary accomplishment, and I wholeheartedly recommend his book to hobbyist and historian alike. [I ordered a hardcover copy from Amazon for $19.77. -Editor] Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@coinlibrary.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum | |
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