Monopoly in French colonies in North America and the West Indies
View of the camp of
John Law
at Biloxi, December 1720
The
Mississippi Company
(
French
:
Compagnie du Mississippi
; founded 1684, named the
Company of the West
from 1717, and the
Company of the Indies
from 1719
[1]
) was a corporation holding a business
monopoly
in French colonies in North America and the West Indies. In 1717, the Mississippi Company received a royal grant with exclusive trading rights for 25 years.
[2]
The rise and fall of the company is connected with the activities of the Scottish financier and economist
John Law
who was then the Controller General of Finances of France. Though the company itself started to become profitable and remained solvent until the collapse of the bubble,
[3]
when speculation in French financial circles and land development in the region became frenzied and detached from economic reality, the
Mississippi bubble
became one of the earliest examples of an
economic bubble
.
In
France
, the wealth of
Louisiana
was exaggerated in a marketing scheme for the newly formed Mississippi Company, and its value temporarily soared to the equivalent of $6.5 trillion today, which would make it the second most valuable company in history behind the
Dutch East India Company
.
[4]
[5]
History
[
edit
]
John Senex
's map (1721), with a dedication to William Law, probably a relative of
John Law
(possibly his brother), who bore much of the blame for the financial panic known as the "Mississippi Bubble".
The
Compagnie du Mississippi
was originally chartered in 1684 by the request of
Rene-Robert Cavelier (de La Salle)
who sailed in that year from France with a large expedition with the intention of founding a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi.
[6]
The expedition did not succeed in this goal; they actually founded a settlement in the vicinity of present-day
Victoria, Texas
, but even this was short-lived.
[7]
In May 1716, Scottish economist
John Law
, who had been appointed Controller General of Finances of France under the
Duke of Orleans
, created the
Banque Generale Privee
("General Private Bank"). It was one of the first European financial institutions to develop the use of
paper money
.
[8]
[9]
[10]
It was a private
bank
, but three-quarters of the capital consisted of government
bills
and government-accepted notes. In August 1717, Law bought the Mississippi Company to help the French colony in
Louisiana
. In the same year Law conceived a
joint-stock
trading company called the
Compagnie d'Occident
(The Mississippi Company, or, literally, "Company of [the] West"). Law was named the Chief Director of this new company, which was granted a trade monopoly of the
West Indies
and
North America
by the French government.
[11]
The company was involved in the
Atlantic slave trade
, importing African slaves to Louisiana.
[12]
Banque Royale
[
edit
]
The bank became the
Banque Royale
(Royal Bank) in 1718, meaning the notes were guaranteed by the king,
Louis XV of France
. The company absorbed the
Compagnie des Indes Orientales
("Company of the East Indies"), the
Compagnie de Chine
("Company of China"), and other rival trading companies and became the
Compagnie Perpetuelle des Indes
on 23 May 1719 with a monopoly of French commerce on all the seas. Simultaneously, the bank began issuing more notes than it could represent in coinage; this led to a currency devaluation, which was eventually followed by a bank run when the value of the new paper currency was halved.
[13]
Satirical cartoon from 1720, the text in the centre reads: "Representation of the very famous island of Mad-head, lying in the sea of shares, discovered by Mr. Law-rens, and inhabited by a collection of all kinds of people, to whom are given the general name shareholders".
Mississippi bubble
[
edit
]
Louis XIV's long reign and wars had nearly bankrupted the French monarchy. Rather than reduce spending, the
Duke of Orleans
, Regent for Louis XV, endorsed the monetary theories of Scottish financier
John Law
. In 1716, Law was given a charter for the Banque Royale under which the national debt was assigned to the bank in return for extraordinary privileges. The key to the Banque Royale agreement was that the national debt would be paid from revenues derived from opening the Mississippi Valley. The Bank was tied to other ventures of Law ? the Company of the West and the Companies of the Indies. All were known as the Mississippi Company. The Mississippi Company had a monopoly on trade and mineral wealth. The Company boomed on paper. Law was given the title Duc d'Arkansas.
[14]
Early French colony
[
edit
]
In 1699 the French formed the first permanent European settlement in
Louisiana (New France)
, at
Fort Maurepas
. They were under the direction of
Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville
.
[
citation needed
]
The first capital of New France from 1702 until 1711 was
La Mobile
, after which the capital was relocated to the site of present-day
Mobile, Alabama
.
[
citation needed
]
In 1718, there were only 700 Europeans in Louisiana.
Benard de la Harpe
and his party left New Orleans in 1719 to explore the
Red River
. In 1721, he explored the Arkansas River. At the Yazoo settlements in Mississippi he was joined by Jean Benjamin who became the scientist for the expedition.
[
citation needed
]
The Mississippi Company arranged ships to bring in 800 more settlers, who landed in Louisiana in 1718, doubling the European population. Law encouraged some German-speaking people, including
Alsatians
and
Swiss
, to emigrate. They gave their names to the
German Coast
and the
Lac des Allemands
in Louisiana.
[
citation needed
]
Prisoners were set free in Paris from September 1719 onwards, and encouraged by Law to marry young women recruited in hospitals.
[15]
In May 1720, after complaints from the Mississippi Company and the concessioners about this class of French immigrants, the French government prohibited such deportations. However, there was a third shipment of prisoners in 1721.
[16]
Speculation
[
edit
]
Law exaggerated the wealth of Louisiana with an effective marketing scheme, which led to wild speculation on the shares of the company in 1719. The scheme promised success for the Mississippi Company by combining investor fervor and the wealth of its Louisiana prospects into a sustainable joint-stock trading company. The popularity of company shares was such that they sparked a need for more paper bank notes, and when shares generated profits the investors were paid out in paper bank notes.
[17]
In 1720, the bank and company were merged and Law was appointed by
Philippe II, Duke of Orleans
, then Regent for Louis XV, to be
Comptroller General of Finances
[18]
to attract capital.
Downfall
[
edit
]
Law's pioneering note-issuing bank thrived until the French government was forced to admit that the number of paper notes being issued by the
Banque Royale
exceeded the value of the amount of metal coinage it held.
[19]
The market price of company shares eventually reached the peak of 10,000 livres. As the shareholders were selling their shares, the money supply in France suddenly doubled, and inflation burgeoned. Inflation reached a monthly rate of 23% in January 1720.
[20]
Opponents of the financier attempted to convert their notes into
specie
(gold and silver)
en masse
, forcing the bank to stop payment on its paper notes.
[21]
The "bubble" burst at the end of 1720.
[20]
By September 1720 the price of shares in the company had fallen to 2,000 livres and to 1,000 by December. By September 1721 share prices had dropped to 500 livres, where they had been at the beginning.
Thornton
explained why Law's scheme failed: "He forgot that there might be no bounds to the demand for paper; that the increasing quantity would contribute to the rise of commodities: and the price of commodities require, and seem to justify, a still further increase."
[22]
By the end of 1720 Philippe d'Orleans had dismissed Law from his positions. Law then fled France for Brussels, eventually moving on to Venice, where his livelihood was gambling. He was buried in the church
San Moise
in Venice.
[13]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"The French Period"
.
Jewell's Crescent City Illustrated
. Cultural Center of the Inter-American Development Bank. Archived from
the original
on 9 October 2012
. Retrieved
1 July
2013
.
- ^
John Ceuvas,
Cat Island, History of the Mississippi Coast
Page 11
- ^
Lanchester, John (29 July 2019).
"The Invention of Money"
.
The New Yorker
.
ISSN
0028-792X
. Retrieved
12 June
2023
.
- ^
Roos, Dave (23 October 2020).
"How the Mississippi Company Became the World's Most Powerful Monopoly"
. History
. Retrieved
29 April
2022
.
- ^
"MARKETSThe Most Valuable Companies of All-Time"
.
VisualCapitalist
. 26 September 2023.
- ^
Bryan Taylor,
The Mississippi Bubble, or How the French Eliminated All Their Government Debt (So Why Can’t Bernanke?)
globalfinancialdata.com -- October 9, 2013
- ^
Association, Texas State Historical.
"La Salle's Texas Settlement"
.
Texas State Historical Association
. Retrieved
31 March
2024
.
- ^
Nevin, Seamus (2013). "Richard cantillon ? The Father of Economics".
History Ireland
.
21
(2): 20?23.
JSTOR
41827152
.
- ^
Backhosue, Roger.
Economists and the economy: the evolution of economic ideas
, Transaction Publishers, 1994,
ISBN
978-1-56000-715-9
, p. 118
- ^
http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2014/01/crisis-chronicles-the-mississippi-bubble-of-1720-and-the-european-debt-crisis.html
NY Federal Reserve: Mississippi Bubble of 1720
- ^
Bammer, Stuart.
Anglo-American Securities Regulation: Cultural and Political Roots, 1690?1860
, Cambridge University Press, 2002,
ISBN
978-0-521-52113-0
, p. 42
- ^
Kleen, Michael (2017).
Witchcraft in Illinois: A Cultural History
. Arcadia.
ISBN
9781625858764
.
- ^
a
b
Sheeran, Paul and Spain, Amber.
The international political economy of investment bubbles
, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2004,
ISBN
978-0-7546-1997-0
, p. 95
- ^
Lande, Lawrence; Congdon, Tim (January 1991). "John Law and the invention of paper money".
RSA (The Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce)
.
139
(5414): 916?928.
From p. 919: "Since he [John Law] controlled the colonial empire of France in the right of his company, he distributed colonial patents of nobility like a monarch, selecting for himself the title of Duke of Arkansas."
- ^
Hardy, James D. Jr. (1966).
"The Transportation of Convicts to Colonial Louisiana"
.
The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association
.
7
(3): 207?220.
JSTOR
4230908
.
- ^
[1]
Cat Island: The History of a Mississippi Gulf Coast Barrier Island
, by John Cuevas
- ^
Beattie, Andrew.
"What burst the Mississippi Bubble?"
on Investopedia.com (17 June 2009)
- ^
Mckay, Charles.
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
. New York: Noonday Press, 1932, p. 25. First edition published 1841, second edition 1852
- ^
"Mississippi Company"
.
- ^
a
b
Moen, Jon (October 2001).
"John Law and the Mississippi Bubble: 1718?1720"
.
Mississippi History Now
. Archived from
the original
on 1 March 2016
. Retrieved
26 April
2021
.
Law devalued shares in the company in several stages during 1720, and the value of bank notes was reduced to 50 percent of their face value. ... The fall in the price of stock allowed Law's enemies to take control of the company by confiscating the shares of investors who could not prove they had actually paid for their shares with real assets rather than credit. This reduced investor shares, or shares outstanding, by two-thirds.
- ^
Davies, Roy and Davies, Glyn.
"A Comparative Chronology of Money: Monetary History from Ancient Times to the Present Day: 1700?1749"
(1996 and 1999)
- ^
Henry Thornton (1802): An enquiry into the nature and effects of the paper credit of Great Britain ('Paper credit')
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Pollard, S. "John Law and the Mississippi Bubble."
History Today
(September 1953) 3#9 pp. 622?630.
- Gleeson, Janet (2001).
Millionaire: The Philanderer, Gambler, and Duelist Who Invented Modern Finance
. New York:
Simon & Schuster
.
ISBN
978-0684872957
.
External links
[
edit
]
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