The Provincial Tokens: Exchange and Industry in Late-Georgian Britain

This project will provide the first study of how tokens, rather than government minted currency, enabled the
industrialization of the British economy and its survival during the wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France. The
18th century economy lacked a sufficiency of small denomination currency to act as a medium of exchange in the new
context of rapid industrialization and war. This thesis will explore how an unofficial medium of exchange arose to
accommodate local wage payments and small scale consumerism, increasing economic efficacy and speed of
distribution in industrialized regions. Recent experimentation with local currencies in Britain, such as the 'Bristol Pound',
as well as unofficial digital currency, like Bitcoin, gives this project contemporary resonance and will be informative in
gauging the potential impact of such experiments. Despite its significance, there is no work on the token economy
regarding systems of exchange and industrial work, with the existing historiography entirely devoted to the tokens as
they relate to monetary policy and numismatics.