The Historic New Orleans Collection, 2018.0194.3
Valsin informs Mme. Lambert that buying a concession in Louisiana—for 100,000 —
is a safe way to invest her money, September 14, 1719.
Decree declaring that the central
bank will buy Company of the Indies
shares at 9000 , March 5, 1720.
The Historic New Orleans Collection, acquisition made possible in part by the
Clarisse Claiborne Grima Fund and the Boyd Cruise Fund, 2010.0158.18
the value of bank notes. Law was arrested,
then re-instated, but by year’s end had to
flee the country. A series of decrees gradually
dismantled the System and returned
France to its old, inefficient revenue structure:
tax-farms, fee-farms and annuities.
Better the devil you know…
Epilogue
Considerable fortunes—some lasting—
were made investing in the Mississippi
System; the thousands of wealthy and
near-wealthy families who bought in late
and paid most for shares were hardest hit
by the Bubble’s collapse—like Law, they
had gambled big and lost big—but their
investments had kept the boom going,
allowing France’s underperforming economy,
for a time, to greatly expand. The
increased money supply and concurrent
absorption of state debt had freed the
Regency to do some long-overdue housekeeping,
including upgrading the Navy’s
fleets and personnel, which were essential
for the survival of France’s colonies.
As for the Compagnie des Indes, even
Law’s enemies realized its success could
help dig the state out from under the
Bubble’s collapse. It was reorganized and
absolved of the central bank’s debt; it
retained its fleet and its trade monopoly in
Louisiana, bringing thousands of colonists
and enslaved African workers to its shores
over the next decade. New Orleans’s
strategic and commercial importance to
France was now on display; it would not
be abandoned—in fact, it would grow
into a city and soon become capital of the
colony.
Howard Margot is a curator at The Historic
New Orleans Collection (THNOC),
a museum, research center and publisher
dedicated to preserving the history and
culture of New Orleans and the Gulf
South.
Notes
1. There is a Law Street in New Orleans, but
the name refers to jurisprudence.
2. The livre tournois was worth almost onefifteenth
of a pound sterling. The actual
symbol, , was often rendered in manuscripts
with a simple hashtag, #.
Sources
Acts of the Royal French Administration concerning
Louisiana, 1717–1771, MSS 268, Williams
Research Center, The Historic New
Orleans Collection. http://hnoc.minisisinc
.com/thnoc/catalog/3/260
Buvat, Jean and Édouard de Barthélemy.
Gazette de la régence janvier 1715–juin 1719:
publiée d’après le manuscrit inédit conservé à
la Bibliothèque royale de La Haye. Paris: G.
Charpentier. 1887.
Giraud, Marcel. Histoire de la Louisiane Française
(5 vol.). Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France. 1953–1966.
John Law and Mississippi Company Collection,
MSS 1000, Williams Research Center,
The Historic New Orleans Collection. http://
hnoc.minisisinc.com/thnoc/catalog/3/34902
John Law Collection (228 imprints, 2 bound
volumes, 5 printed broadsides, and 3 manuscripts),
MSS 606, Williams Research
Center, The Historic New Orleans Collection.
http://hnoc.minisisinc.com/thnoc/
catalog/3/10047
Law, John. Money and Trade Considered:
With a Proposal for Supplying the Nation
with Money. First Published at Edinburgh
MDCCV. By the Celebrated John Law, Esq;
Afterward Director to the Missisipi Company.
Glasgow: Printed and sold by R. & A.
Foulis. 1750.
Law, John and Antoin E. Murphy. John Law’s
Essay on a Land Bank. Dublin: Aeon Publishing.
1994.
Murphy, Antoin E. John Law: Economic Theorist
and Policy-Maker. Oxford: New York: Clarendon
Press; Oxford University Press. 1997.
www.MoAF.org | Summer 2020 | FINANCIAL HISTORY 35