John Law

Scottish-born John Law (1671 to 1729) developed a body of economic ideas at a point when the discipline was barely formed. Popular memory, however, reduces him to a womanizing swordsman and inveterate gambler. This intellectual biography reframes him as a serious economic thinker who sought to turn his theories into official policy across early eighteenth-century Europe.

Law wrote with a directness and familiarity with modern terms that set him apart from the heavy, convoluted prose common among his peers. His picture of a monetary order was ahead of its time: he imagined an economy run on paper money and credit, with no real function for coin.

His career as a policy-maker ended in failure. Entrenched financiers and their aristocratic patrons blocked him, and his theories contained weaknesses of their own. His bid for influence unfolded during Europe's first large stock boom and bust. The fall of the Mississippi System, a scheme he had devised, along with the South Sea Bubble, left the lasting impression that he had failed. Antoin Murphy sets out to challenge that verdict.