Thinking Metallurgically: Metals and Empire in the Projects of Edward Hayes

Edward Hayes is well known for his involvement in North American colonization in the sixteenth century, but less known for his monetary schemes in Ireland. This essay reappraises Hayes’s seemingly disconnected career to argue that metallurgy connected his projects. Envisioning a circulatory economy under-girded by bullionist policies, Hayes offered metallic solutions to England’s social ills and rationalized them as public goods using alchemical and millenarian discourses. Over time, Hayes’s economic thinking progressed to a narrower focus on coinage—the lifeblood of the economy—as the key to restoring social harmony.