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1720

Mississippi Bubble

John Law’s notes and Mississippi shares break in the same year.

1720 satirical print of Mississippi Company shareholders fleeing toward Vianen during the bubble collapse.
“De Malle Actionisten naar Vianen” (1720) from Het Groote Tafereel der Dwaasheid — Mississippi Bubble satire.CC0 — Rijksmuseum (RP-P-OB-83.554).

John Law’s System tied a note-issuing bank to the Mississippi Company. In 1720 the paper and the shares came down together. Paris had treated the notes as money until it did not.

This is not the assignats of the 1790s, and it is not Germany in 1923. It is one regency’s paper-and-shares collapse.

John Law and the Mississippi Bubble →