A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States (review)

This book presents an engaging account of the development of the money system in the years before the Civil War, in which counterfeiting features as both the central topic and the controlling metaphor. It is exciting because it demonstrates something that usually does not demand conscious attention: the free circulation of paper currency depends on the social construction of particular forms of trust. In describing the chaotic conditions by which purchasing power was finessed in the "mobile, anonymous society" (p. 12) of the new republic, Stephen Mihm notes that the brand of capitalism established through the agency of banknotes in this environment was not the sober, plodding accumulation associated with the ideas of Max Weber, but was instead a feverish mode of flashy, amoral speculation.

In unveiling the allegedly murky beginnings of American capitalist expertise, this book also glances at more current economic woes, and in that sense is perhaps a counterpart to Doron Ben-Atar's Trade Secrets: Intellectual Piracy and the Origins of American Industrial Power (2004). In comparison to mere copying, however, counterfeiting produces some teasing mixtures of strategies of innovation that intrigue the reader. Mihm's text revels in the sensationalism of retelling the lives of notorious criminals (often quoting from their own sensationalized memoirs), but, in addition, it also generates excitement through the accumulation of detailed case histories that show the importance of local conditions in which the hunger for credit, the confluence of know-how and machinery, and ambivalent attitudes toward the law gave rise to a huge effervescence of counterfeiting activity that gained protective coloring from the thousands of banknote designs issued by local banks, railroad companies, and the like. Indeed, when "wildcat" banks issued dubious notes based on fraudulently overvalued assets, or when real money was in short supply, counterfeiters were often secretly approved for their public service in facilitating trade.

Mihm begins on the margins of a political union that was initially shaky, by showing how counterfeiters exploited wild or border territories, such as the "Cogniac Street" forgers who traded in New York but were based in rural Canada, or the lawless economies of the inland waterways that ran from the Great Lakes down to the Mississippi and New Orleans. But as the book unfolds its theme of counterfeiting as the dark twin of capitalist expansion, the narrative moves from the frontiers to expanding urban centers, to analyze for example the conditions in New York that produced the "zenith" of counterfeiting in the 1850s (p. 208). This city of anonymous strangers created networks of service industries and new shopping environments where counterfeiters worked hard to establish trust in their product. At the bottom of the distribution chain were the passers of fake notes, "shovers," frequently women who cultivated a clean, quiet, and respectable appearance, just as honest shop assistants in the new department stores also learned to mimic the demeanor of their middle-class customers.

Although the broad narrative of this book presents some ideas that feel familiar—for example, from the writings of Marc Shell (1982 and 1995)—there is an exhilarating sense of confirmation and rootedness given by the strength in details and original research, and Mihm's ability to integrate social, technical, and cultural history. The reward for the reader is a fruitful counterpoint of many strands, with consideration of the many techniques used to generate confidence in the product (banknotes) on both sides of the criminal line in the period, ranging through social engagement and self-presentation and the ambiguous security of technical innovation in print to management of production, networks of distribution, and the eventual centralized federal control of currency and its policing. Confidence in the currency, argues Mihm, was ultimately dependent on confidence in the nation, but only after the abyss of the Civil War had threatened its very existence. The final introduction of the greenback in 1862 was thus not just a...