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The Mississippi Bubble was one of history’s most spectacular financial crashes. The royal French financial system never recuperated fully from the blow. The way in which the Mississippi Company used its political clout to manipulate share prices and fuel the buying frenzy caused the public to lose faith in the French banking system and in the financial wisdom of the French king. Louis XV found it more and more difficult to raise credit. This became one of the chief reasons that the overseas French Empire fell into British hands. While the British could borrow money easily and at low interest rates, France had difficulties securing loans, and had to pay high interest on them. In order to finance his growing debts, the king of France borrowed more and more money at higher and higher interest rates. Eventually, in the 1780s, Louis XVI, who had ascended to the throne on his grandfather’s death, realised that half his annual budget was tied to servicing the interest on his loans, and that he was heading towards bankruptcy. Reluctantly, in 1789, Louis XVI convened the Estates General, the French parliament that had not met for a century and a half, in order to find a solution to the crisis. Thus began the French Revolution.
Sapiens
Yuval Noah Harari
comparisons with south-east Asia show that the significance of bureaucracies ultimately depends on the more fundamental governmental decision to force entrepreneurs to manufacture for export and then to cull firms which fail to perform adequately. Bureaucracies are only as good as the policies they implement. Above all, developing states must force their most powerful and resourceful entrepreneurs to export, typically against their will. Firms that can make money at home in a protected environment are always reluctant to compete globally. Other policies tend to be induced by this basic framework. That said, the framework was not rationalised in east Asia by policy makers, but rather copied by nineteenth-century Japan from historical example.
How Asia Works
Joe Studwell
History is something that very few people have been doing while everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets.
Sapiens
Yuval Noah Harari
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