Banque Générale

Law founds a bank whose notes are payable in coin under stated rules. The Mississippi collapse is 1720.

Portrait of John Law. The Banque Générale is 1716. The collapse is 1720. This is not a picture of the bust.Public domain.

In 1716 John Law founded the Banque Générale. The notes were a convenient claim on metal, not metal itself. The crown later takes a closer grip, and the bank is reorganized as the Banque Royale.

The share mania and the break belong to 1719 and 1720, not to this founding year.

John Law and the Mississippi Bubble →