J. L. Bell
The Boston Bankruptcy That Led to the American Revolution
In early 1765, Boston’s business world was rocked with the news that Nathaniel Wheelwright could not pay all his debts. His promissory notes had been treated as virtual currency in the colony, and over the next several months many more people, from a Boston selectman to the mother of Dr. Joseph Warren,were forced into bankruptcy.
This talk looks at the roots of that crisis in British imperial policy and family dynamics, and at its ripple effects in the Revolutionary period.
[Recorded March 08, 2014.]
Will Melton retired in 2015 after four decades in university and museum fundraising to devote time to gardening, his mandolin ensemble, and history studies and writing. Liberty’s War, An Engineer’s Memoir of the Merchant Marine 1942-45, which he published in 2017, is available from U.S. Naval Institute Press.
