How was the Revolutionary War paid for?

Interesting article...

How was the Revolutionary War paid for?
http://allthingsliberty.com/2015/02/how-was-the-revolutionary-war-paid-for/

It’s one thing to make speeches about declaring independence, or to assemble militias and discuss battle tactics against the enemy.

It’s quite another thing to pay for it all.

So how do you pay for a war that no one expected to last eight years?

Great Britain possessed world-wide colonies, tremendous wealth, the ability to tax its subjects, and excellent credit ratings in the well-established world credit market. But how did the fledgling American confederation of 13 states and a weak Congress go about funding their own rebellion?

History books and many teachers will imply that the French money and supplies before and after the Battles of Saratoga made all of the difference in America winning the war. While the French assistance certainly helped, it actually did a disservice to the Americans who basically paid for their own rebellion… the merchants, suppliers, planters and growers, average families, and of course the soldiers of the Continental Army. Let’s look at the total picture of how the War for Independence was paid for – 100 percent of which was paid for by Americans themselves through taxes, bonds, IOUs, and by paying off all foreign loans.


(More at above url)
 
That is a good article. The short answer is apparently: fiat currency, deficit spending, borrowing from present and future generations, and fiscal union.
 
My quick and dirty thoughts on seeing how the war was financed.

The only real money and debt was what was borrowed from abroad. And I'm thinking that the Swan guy was some kind of crony that was allowed to buy the stuff from the gov't at a discount so that he could turn around and immediately sell it at a profit. I wonder how much of the profit got kicked back to the politicians.

Just about all the rest of it was money printed up out of thin air. If the people were going to break from Britain, they were going to have to put up just about everything they owned to fight the war. But the problem was they wanted to get paid for stuff they put up and for their services. So the gov't decided to just print up money and give it to them in order to make them feel like they got paid for their time and property. It was just an illusion to make them feel better. In reality they were the ones paying but they were conned into believing that they were being paid.
 
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