Caribbean Exchanges: Slavery and the Transformation of English Society, 1650-1700 Book

I thought this was a fantastic book - outlining the twin bubbles in France & England in the 1720s, which were the first financial bubbles and each of which collapsed disastrously.

A Scotsman named John Law orchestrated the Mississippi debacle in Paris - trying to get the value of money removed from its connection to metal, selling shares in a trading enterprise in Mississippi, which never panned out as planned. Credit became paramount and for a while France was transformed but eventually the bubble collapsed, Law lost all his power etc.

In England, John Blunt arranged to sell shares in the national debt, assuring investors of immense returns. The only way he could keep the game going was by pumping up the value of the shares. He used dishonesty to do so, hype, and also bribing many government figures. When the share prices began to fall, the game was up - eventually the value of shares became virtually worthless. There followed a trial in the Commons, several suicides of figures who knew that the "enterprise" (South Seas meant the West Indies - supposedly the company would trade at Spanish ports, but this never happened) was based on absolutely nothing. The long-term legacy of the South Sea bubble was a long period of drabness in England, of distrust of stocks, and bubbles in general. The exuberance of the boom period when the value of the stock was rising and it seemed that anyone could become rich, led to inventions, innovations, and myriad new enterprises. But that was all over as depression and introspection set in after the crash.

The lesson of the story is that people are so eager to get rich, they will believe anything, any story about a company that will make them rich. They'll invest what they have, even what they don't. The sad stories of country gentlemen mortgaging their farms to buy stock, and then trying to deal with the aftermath of losing their property when the price of stock fell are recounted, as are stories of those who wisely cashed out before the stock began to tumble.

This was an extremely well-written book - I'd recommend it to anyone who is interested in finding out about the first stock market crash.