Explores the complex financial underpinnings of both settlement and ultimately rebellion.

Chapter One: Trade and Economic Development; The Idea of Ownership; The Lure of Gold; Coinage; Barter; Commodity Money; Representative Money; Fiat Money; Taxation and Trade; Features:; The Seven Cities of Cibola; The Value of Wampum; Chapter Two: The Colonizing Nations; Spain in the Americas; France in the Americas; Traders and Trappers; New Netherlands and New Amsterdam; Buying Manhattan; The Last Director General; Features:; The Landing of Columbus; The Encomeinda System; In Defense of the Indians (journal); Chapter Three: The Early English Colonies; Settling Jamestown; Money Troubles; John Rolfe and the Devil's Weed; A Matter of Vision; The Plymouth Colony; Features:; Tobacco; The Banishment of Roger Williams; Chapter Four: Maritime Trade; Trade with the West Indies; Cash Crops in the South; Labor and the Plantations; Slave Trade; Triangle Trade; Piracy; Features:; Eliza's Indigo; A Cargo Manifest; Blackbeard the Pirate (biography); Chapter Five: Economic Life; Transportation; Slave Trading Between Plantations; Native American Trading Practices; The World of Work; Shopkeepers and Businessmen; Features:; Paul Revere (biography); An Apprentice's Tale; River Barges; Chapter Six: The Road to Revolution; Navigation Acts; French and Indian War; Stamp Act; Townshend Act; Tea Act; Boston Tea Party; Intolerable Acts; Currency; Commerce and The Constitution; Capitalism; Features:; Benjamin Franklin (biography); Adam Smith (biography); Timeline; Glossary.