"A Taxation Upon All the Fools in Creation:" Lotteries in the British North American Empire.
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Date
2004-07-26
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Abstract
The purpose of this work is to explore lotteries in England and the American colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. From the founding of the Jamestown colony to the financing of the American Revolution, lotteries played a role in the economic life of the colonies. Lotteries had been used in England since 1569, and colonists brought this unique form of obtaining revenue with them to America. Colonists saw lotteries as a part of British life, and as an important means of raising revenue for public and private projects.
This work examines the impact that lotteries had on the colonies, the types of lotteries that colonial governments and private citizens established, and how the colonists and the crown reacted to the lotteries. These lotteries played an important role in colonial economies, and the crown regulated the lotteries in an attempt to control the colonists and keep the mercantilist relationship in check. The crown sporadically sought to regulate lotteries during the colonial period, and in 1769 issued royal instructions requiring pre-approval for all lotteries, in an effort to suppress lotteries in the colonies. This work focuses on the lotteries held by the Virginia Company in England to aid the Jamestown Colony, the various types of public and private lotteries held in the colonies, the crown's decision to suppress colonial lotteries and the impetus behind this decision, and the 1776 United States Lottery held to help finance the Revolutionary War.
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Lotteries, Great Britain, Colonial America
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Degree
MA
Discipline
History
