The Contours of Counterfeit in Early Modern French North America

The counterfeiting that appeared in the courts of France’s eighteenth-century North American empire mainly took the form of tampering with, or mimicking, transferable instruments of public credit. Before and after John Law’s “Système”, as well as during, a “potpourri” of paper promises financed much of France’s expansion into “L’Amérique septentrionale”. For the most part, these millions of i.o.us were handwritten and individually signed by colonial officials stationed overseas. They included such items as playing cards circulating as local legal tender and transatlantic bills of exchange drawn on France’s naval treasurers. From the war of Austrian Succession onward, the volume and types of circulating paper promises grew exponentially—the paper became more tattered, traveled greater distances (into the Ohio valley, for example), and carried more informal bits of writing from a wider range of officials. Alongside these homely manuscripts, and beginning in the 1750s, printed public credit instruments were sent from France. At all times, it was fairly easy for literate colonists to forge a signature, a monetary value, or replicate an official stamp. Those accused of counterfeiting, however, came overwhelmingly from the ranks of professional soldiers. “Foreigners” from British colonies comprised a tiny minority of those whose actions were inscribed in written criminal procedures. A few elite counterfeiters, including a high-ranking Louisiana official, are known to have escaped court procedures altogether, and thus the threat of the death penalty. The thousands of pages of criminal procedure spanning the 1680s to the 1750s yield rich glimpses of money’s social life—every-day transactions that otherwise remain invisible; negotiations of trust and monetary truth; agency exercised by those with the fewest degrees of freedom. The Regency era stands out as an era of brazen counterfeit rings that can perhaps be understood as practices of subaltern mimicry.