Card money in New France

The growth of French colonization, which began about the middle of the seventeenth century, was accompanied by continual difficulty in finding sufficient currency for the needs of settlers, merchants and government establishments.

As a result, not only were funds hard to come by, but the scarcity of actual currency and coinage in New France created a persistent problem in daily transactions (Bank of Canada, 1966, p. 6).

Typically, when short of funds, the government simply delayed paying merchants for their purchases until a fresh supply of specie arrived from France.

Having exhausted all other financial avenues, Jacques de Meulles, intendant of justice, police and finance in New France, was desperate for a solution (Powel, 2005, p. 4).

I have issued an ordinance by which I have obliged all the inhabitants to receive this money in payments, and to give it circulation, at the same time pledging myself, in my own name, to redeem the said notes."

Nonetheless, apprehended counterfeiters were harshly dealt with, the first punishments including caning, branding, banishment, the galleys, and public shaming (Pritchard, 2004, p. 253).

After being severely flogged and whipped, the man was sold into bondage for three years, but subsequent offenders would receive the penalty for counterfeiting which was later changed to death by hanging (Lester, 1964, p. 12).

A colourful account of one large-scale counterfeiting operation is given in the memoir of Lieutenant Jean-Francois-Benjamin Dumont de Montigny, an officer in the French colonial navy who spent two years stationed (though often bedridden with illness) in Quebec.

All four were imprisoned and sentenced to death, but were somehow smuggled files to cut their chains and escaped on a fishing boat back to France (Sayre and Zecher, 2012, p. 77-79).

While it must be assumed that Dumont embellished parts of the story for the purpose of entertainment, court records validate most of its major events (Sayre and Zecher, 2012, p. 79).

However, it must also be assumed that most counterfeiting took place on a far smaller scale and was underreported, as some historians claim that such activity was so rare as to have never been a major problem (McCullough, 1984, 36).

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, due to ongoing wars in Europe, the financial aid to the French colonies decreased, meaning that goods were regularly shipped in place of currency.

Unfortunately, the new card money quickly gave rise to the same issues as before, and during the War of the Spanish Succession finances in France went from bad to bankruptcy (Heaton 1928, 655).

Declining tax revenues and corruption lead to rapid inflation, and a letter from the Marquis de Montcalm in April 1759 stated that necessary life provisions cost eight times more than they had in 1755 (Bank of Canada 1990, p. 9).