New World Calculation: The Making of Numbers in Colonial America

Molly Farrell tells the story of colonial America as a testing ground for new ways of conceptualizing numbers, uncovering overlooked forms of numerical thinking to argue that colonialism and the rise of racial capitalism incited a struggle about what exactly a number is and what it can do.

When English settlers began colonizing indigenous lands, they confronted groups of people with very different beliefs about numbers. Meanwhile, Atlantic colonialism required tremendous accounting work, es...