Lotteries in Colonial America / Edition 1

by Neal Millikan

Overview

Lotteries in Colonial America explores lotteries in England and the American colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. From the founding of Jamestown to the financing of the American Revolution, lotteries played an important role in the economic life of the colonies. Lotteries provided an alternative form of raising money for colonial governments and a means of subsidizing public and private projects without enacting new taxes. The book also describes and analyzes the role of lotteries in the eighteenth-century consumer revolution, which transformed how buyers viewed the goods they purchased, or in the case of lotteries, won. As the middling classes in the colonies began to acquire objects that went beyond mere necessities, lotteries gave colonists an opportunity to risk a small sum in the hopes of gaining riches or valuable goods. Finally, the book examines how lotteries played a role in the changing notions of fortune in colonial America. Religion and chance were present in colonial lotteries as participants merged their own free will to purchase a lottery ticket with the will of the Christian God to select a winner.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415886567
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	04/11/2011
Series:	Studies in American Popular History and Culture
Pages:	152
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Neal Millikan received her doctorate in History from the University of South Carolina. She has been the assistant project director of the Digital Edition of the Papers of Eliza Lucas Pinckney and Harriott Pinckney Horry, and has been a NHPRC Fellow with the Adams Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Table of Contents

@contents:Introduction 1. "City and Country Run Mad After Riches:" English Lotteries from the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries 2. Crossing the Pond: Public and Private Lotteries in Colonial America 3. "A Scheme of a Lottery:" The Mechanics of Colonial Lotteries and Interpreting a Lottery Advertisement 4. Lotteries, the Consumer Revolution, and Changing Notions of Fortuna 5. "Inexpedient and Improper:" The End of Colonial Lotteries and the Beginning of Lotteries in the United States Conclusion