Mississippi Company

Mississippi Company
Company type	Public
Industry	International trade
Founded	1684
Founders	Louis XIV
Defunct	1721
Fate	Bankrupt
Headquarters	France

View of the camp of John Law at Biloxi, December 1720

The Mississippi Company (French: Compagnie du Mississippi; founded 1684, named the Company of the West from 1717, and the Company of the Indies from 1719^[1]) was a corporation holding a business monopoly in French colonies in North America and the West Indies. In 1717, the Mississippi Company received a royal grant with exclusive trading rights for 25 years.^[2] The rise and fall of the company is connected with the activities of the Scottish financier and economist John Law who was then the Controller General of Finances of France. Though the company itself started to become profitable and remained solvent until the collapse of the bubble,^[3] when speculation in French financial circles and land development in the region became frenzied and detached from economic reality, the Mississippi bubble became one of the earliest examples of an economic bubble.

In France, the wealth of Louisiana was exaggerated in a marketing scheme for the newly formed Mississippi Company, and its value temporarily soared to the equivalent of $6.5 trillion today, which would make it the second most valuable company in history behind the Dutch East India Company.^[4]^[5]

^ "The French Period". Jewell's Crescent City Illustrated. Cultural Center of the Inter-American Development Bank. Archived from the original on 9 October 2012. Retrieved 1 July 2013.
^ John Ceuvas, Cat Island, History of the Mississippi Coast Page 11
^ Lanchester, John (29 July 2019). "The Invention of Money". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 12 June 2023.
^ Roos, Dave (23 October 2020). "How the Mississippi Company Became the World's Most Powerful Monopoly". History. Retrieved 29 April 2022.
^ "MARKETSThe Most Valuable Companies of All-Time". VisualCapitalist. 26 September 2023.

[FP-1] "The French Period". Jewell's Crescent City Illustrated. Cultural Center of the Inter-American Development Bank. Archived from the original on 9 October 2012. Retrieved 1 July 2013.

[2] John Ceuvas, Cat Island, History of the Mississippi Coast Page 11

[3] Lanchester, John (29 July 2019). "The Invention of Money". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 12 June 2023.

[4] Roos, Dave (23 October 2020). "How the Mississippi Company Became the World's Most Powerful Monopoly". History. Retrieved 29 April 2022.

[5] "MARKETSThe Most Valuable Companies of All-Time". VisualCapitalist. 26 September 2023.

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