(2) Economist abroad | Wind and Smoke.
https://www.economist.com/books- ... -scottish-economist
(book review on James Buchan, John Law; A Scottish adventurer of the eighteenth century. MacLehose Press, 2018)
Note:
(a) "As the 18th century dawned * * * exclaimed Voltaire [1694 – 1778; a pen name] in horror[:] 'Nobody talks of anything but millions.' * * * Daniel Defoe [1660 – 1731; a Londoner; published Robinson Crusoe in 1719] thought the French seemed to have converted 'refined air' into profit. Voltaire offered a different suggestion: perhaps they had 'found the philosopher's stone in the mills of paper.' * * * The mania was the work of John Law * * * The son of an Edinburgh goldsmith * * * having killed a man in a duel he was given leg fetters and a death sentence. In 1695 he escaped from prison and fled to Holland."
(i) John Law (economist)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Law_(economist)
(1671 – 1729; He originated economic ideas such as the scarcity theory of value; figure caption: "A supply and demand diagram" (that appears in every economics textbook) )
(ii)
(A) legcuffs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legcuffs
(alternative terms are leg cuffs, shackles, footcuffs, fetters or leg irons; photos)
(B) fetter (n; Did You Know?)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fetter
(b) "Ever since Caesar had marched across Gaul [Gallic Wars 58 - 50 BC], money in France had meant metal, mainly silver (hence 'argent'). But in the financial markets of Holland and Italy, money was evolving with astonishing speed. Behaving less like silver than quicksilver, it was mutating from hard metal to lines on paper or entries in a book. What mattered was not coinage but confidence. Dreaming of financial revolution, Law wrote a pamphlet titled 'A Proposal for Supplying the Nation with Money.' "
(i) French-English dictionary:
* argent (noun masculine; from Latin [noun neuter] argentum [silver]): "1 : silver 2 : money"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/argent#French
(ii) The full title of the pamphlet: Money and Trade Considered; With a proposal for supplying the nation with money. (1705).
(c) "He [John Law] caught the eye of the French regent, the duc d'Orléans. France was desperate for cash. Costly wars and Louis XIV's profligacy meant that, as one soldier put it, the 'Treasury is absolutely empty.' A miracle was needed—and the alchemical Law was on hand to provide it. The regent hired him and, in 1720, made him controller general of the king's finances. France watched in awe as paper money was printed and shares in its new joint-stock company, which administered the Louisiana colony, rocketed; the word 'millionaire' [French then and now: millionnaire] appeared. Then the bubble burst. Confidence in Law's paper money crumbled. There was a run on the bank; several investors were crushed to death while trying to have their paper turned back into silver. The Louisiana company's shares tanked."
(i) Louis xiv of France (1638 – 1715) had an eldest son who was anointed as heir, who died (age 49) in 1711 of smallpox. The latter's eldest son was then elevated as the heir, who, however, died 10 months later at age 29 of measles. Eighteen days after that (Mar 7, 1712), both the eldest and second oldest sons (ie, Louis XIV's great-grandsons) of the last was diagnosed with measles; the eldest son died of both measles and treatment (blood-letting) and the second oldest son did not go through the treatment, survived and inherited the throne at age 5 when Louis XIV died at age 76 of gangrene on his leg caused by diabetes.
(ii) Philippe II, Duke of Orléans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_II,_Duke_of_Orléans
(1674 – 1723; was Louis XIV's nephew -- ie son of Louis XIV's young brother who was Philippe I; named by Louis XIV as regent of France for Louis XV and served from 1715 until Louis attained his majority [upon reaching age 13] in 1923)
died ten month after stepping down as regent at age 49 (in December 1723) when visiting a mistress and sitting beside her and crying out and falling dead at her feet. Philippe II, by his title (duke), was from the 4th House of Orléans (the fourth creation of House of Orléans, created by king Louis XIV)..
(d) "Then the bubble burst. Confidence in Law's paper money crumbled. There was a run on the bank [with people] trying to have their paper turned back into silver. * * * The French were aghast as [paper] money and shares were transformed yet again, this time into what a Dutch cartoon called 'wind and smoke [meaning: nothing].' Montesquieu satirised money’s reputation in a sketch in which a man moans about lending his friend some. His complaint wasn't that the loan vanished but that 'the rat paid it back! What abominable perfidy! [except this article, I fail to find this statement elsewhere in the Web; I assume rat referred to his friend]' "
perfidy (n, etymology)
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/perfidy
(e) banknote
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknote
("The first short-lived attempt at issuing banknotes by a central bank was in 1661 by Stockholms Banco, a predecessor of Sweden's central bank Sveriges Riksbank. * * * Three years later, the [Swedish] bank went bankrupt, after rapidly increasing the artificial money supply through the large-scale printing of paper money. * * * The first bank to initiate the permanent issue of banknotes was the Bank of England. Established in 1694 to raise money for the funding of the war against France [Nine Years' War (1688–1697)], the bank began issuing notes in 1695")
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发表于 9-20-2018 16:47:50
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