author
John Law
1671–1729
A brilliant and reckless financial thinker, he helped transform the way Europe imagined money, credit, and public finance. His dramatic rise in France—and the crash tied to the Mississippi Scheme—made him one of the most fascinating figures in economic history.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in Edinburgh in 1671, John Law was a Scottish economist, banker, and adventurer who later became a major force in French finance. After leaving Britain and spending years on the Continent, he developed bold ideas about money and argued that paper credit, if managed well, could stimulate trade and strengthen a nation.
In France, he founded a bank that issued paper money and became closely associated with the Mississippi Company, a vast financial venture tied to French colonial ambitions in North America. For a brief period, his system seemed to offer a way out of the kingdom’s debt troubles, and Law rose to extraordinary influence at court.
The boom did not last. Speculation spiraled, confidence broke, and the collapse of his system in 1720 made his name inseparable from one of history’s most famous financial bubbles. Even so, his ideas about credit, banking, and the role of money kept historians and economists interested long after his death in Venice in 1729.