While researching the Currency Acts of 1751 and 1764, it was discovered that they played a big role in the cause of the American Revolution. These Acts kept the colonists from using paper money as a way to pay debts and as legal tender, which made the American colonists confused and angry. The combination of those Acts and tax acts, such as the Sugar and Stamp Act, were leading factors that caused the colonists to start the Revolution. The Currency Act of 1751 did not cause that much commotion on its own, but when the Currency Act of 1764 was formed, it caused a lot of problems. So, the goal of this paper is to explain how the Currency Acts of 1751 and 1764 restricted and affected the British colonies in America and how the colonists reacted to them. In the early 1700s, the New England colonists started using paper money. They did this because there was a shortage of government money and coins, and the government allowed the paper money’s usage as long as the colonists “would accept the currency as payment for taxes” (“Currency Act of 1751(England)”). Eventually, the …show more content…
For example, the Acts caused gold and silver mines to vanish from the American colonies, and the Acts also caused the Dutch, French, and Spanish to cease trading with the colonies. This caused the Triangular Trade, which was a trading pattern where slaves, sugar or molasses, and rum were traded between the West Indies, Africa, and New England, to now provide “an imbalance of trade in the colonies” (AlchinPrivacy) and a favorable balance of trade in Great Britain, which resulted in a liability in trade. Most of the colonies already had a severe shortage of funds, which made the New England, Southern, and Middle colonies feel threatened and upset. Eventually, the farming areas of the Southern colonies and the productive Northern colonies, which were all the New England colonies, planned to unite against the Currency