Introduction

From the Peace of the Pyrenees (1659) to Waterloo (1815), France was the dominant power in Europe. Meanwhile, Britain rose, politically and economically. Public finance is one of the areas where the contest and the contrast between the two powers is the clearest. Following a crucial political transformation in 1688, Britain innovated and acquired the financial institutions and tools that enabled its final supremacy. France, it would seem, let its size advantage fritter away and this stretch of time was just as much time lost.

On closer inspection, the picture is not so simple. I argue that the period of French financial history extending from 1683 to 1726 displays much turmoil, experimentation and innovation. France did not suffer from a lack of financial instruments, indeed some in 1720 probably thought it had far too many. As for institutions, they are all experiments that have succeeded, and thus cannot serve as explanations.

Successive French governments were aware of the contest in which they were engaged. The last wars of Louis XIV required extraordinary efforts to raise the necessary resources. After the king's death in 1715, there followed a period of ten years during which solutions were sought, debated, and tried. The brief French career of John Law, theorist and policymaker, might seem exceptional, but was in fact emblematic. Partly to deflect attention from John Law, I will use the career of four famous but poorly-known financiers, the Paris brothers, as a thread through this narrative.

In the rest of this introduction I give a rapid biographical sketch of the Paris brothers, then describe the broad geopolitical context of the period I study and the fiscal and financial instruments then in use. The narrative itself is roughly chronological and naturally divided in three by the John Law episode. I emphasize the innovations in the periods before, during, and after Law.

The Paris Brothers

Who are these famous but poorly known figures of French financial history? The Paris brothers were the children of Jean Paris (1643–97) and Justine Trenannay La Montagne (d. 1722).