The development of counterfeiting legislation in colonial New York: The relationship between modernization and 'thwart law'

This dissertation fills a gap in Louise Shelley's theory linking modernization and property crime. Examined is the underestimated role of law as a factor in the modernization process. Specific focus is on the potential of precise statutory language, as an intervening variable, in Shelley's pessimistic linkage. An analysis of the relationship between commercialization (an early stage of modernization) in colonial New York, and legislation enacted to thwart an increase in counterfeiting, is used to illustrate the important connection between social change and legal change, and between legal change and the modernization process.;As colonial New York commercialized, counterfeiting increased to the point of threatening the colony's economic development. A series of pivotal acts were passed between 1683-1773 that contained, within their texts, comprehensive provisions and stipulations designed to foil, frustrate, and frighten potential counterfeiters. This study breaks down these provisions and stipulations into techno-thwarts (devised to deter a variant of counterfeiting before it occurred), perimeter thwarts (structured to complicate the completion of a particular counterfeiting act), and penal thwarts (written to make the punishments for committing outlawed counterfeiting frauds too severe to risk).;In addition to illustrating the evolution of such segmented thwart law by an emerging economy, this study illuminated the persistent struggle of lawmakers to criminalize new loopholes contrived by cunning criminals, and the incremental conversion of an offense from misdemeanor to felony. Seen are the fears, follies, and changing perceptions of a developing society, and the recurrent interplay between commercialization and legislation.;Amassed and analyzed for this research were the ninety-nine surviving counterfeiting cases recorded in colonial New York's major courts. These court records, along with other primary and secondary sources, indicate that New York's anti-counterfeiting laws were somewhat effective, that the presence at trial of Crown witnesses was critical in securing convictions, and that professional, organized criminals were more likely to be condemned to the gallows than were ordinary citizen-counterfeiters or marginal offenders. Demonstrated, and significant, is that too many essential participants in the criminal justice system (e.g., constables, jailers, jurors) failed to fulfill their obligations, thereby weakening the full potential of a unique succession of laws.