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This is a study of Irish-born Richard Cantillon, eighteenth century banker and economist whose Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en General (1755), published twenty-one years after his death, remains a significant contribution to the development of monetary theory.
List of contents
- 1: Introduction
- 2: Richard Cantillon's Background
- 3: Cantillon's Early Career
- 4: Cantillon's Début as a Banker in Paris, 1714-17
- 5: John Law and Richard Cantillon: The First Mississippi Fortune-Phase One
- 6: Bernard Cantillon's Expedition to Louisiana, 1719
- 7: Lady Mary Herbert and Joseph Gage: Two of the Great Speculators of the Age
- 8: The Mississippi System-Phase Two
- 9: London and Amsterdam: The Great Crashes in these Cities in 1720
- 10: The Rich Mississippian and his Wife Mary Anne
- 11: Debt Collection and its Legal Consequences
- 12: The Strange Accusations of Christopher Balfe
- 13: The Writing and Contents of the Essai sur la nature du commerce en général
- 14: The Demise of Richard Cantillon
- 15: The Publication of the Essai in 1755
- Concluding Note
About the author
Antoin E. Murphy is a retired Professor of Economics and Fellow Emeritus of Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin. He was a visiting scholar at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard, the Institut d'Études Démographiques in Paris, the Hoover Institution, and the Department of Economics at Stanford University. His special interests are in macroeconomics, monetary economics, and the history of monetary thought. He was one of the founding and joint managing editors of the European Journal of the History of Economic Thought.
Summary
This is a study of Irish-born Richard Cantillon, eighteenth century banker and economist whose Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en General (1755), published twenty-one years after his death, remains a significant contribution to the development of monetary theory.
Additional text
This is a fascinating piece of historical detective work. Anyone who is interested in the mercantile, monetary and financial history of the period, should read this study which corrects many of the simplistic notions that enjoy academic currency.
