The Politics of Utopia: A New History of John Law’s System, 1695-1795

A fascinating retelling of the first banking and financial collapse in eighteenth-century France.

The Scottish economist John Law has been described as the architect of modern central banking. His ＂System,＂ established in Regency France between 1716 and 1720, saw the founding of a bank issuing paper money and the establishment of state commercial and colonial enterprises aimed at consolidating public debt. What at first seemed like financial wizardry, however, resulted in rampant speculation and, ultimately, economic collapse. In The Politics of Utopia, historian Arnaud Orain offers a provocative rereading of this well-known episode.

Starting his story in the seventeenth century, Orain reconstructs the figures and ideas, long predating Law, that anticipated and laid the groundwork for the System, which, he argues, is best understood as a failed social utopia aimed at the total transformation of society. Overturning familiar narratives of this seismic event, this book rewrites a stunning chapter in economic history by dealing with the cultural, colonial, religious, and political dimensions of the (in)famous System up to the French Revolution, revealing new lessons for today’s fraught financial landscape.

Arnaud Orain is an economist and historian who is directeur d’études at the Centre des Recherches Historiques at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Andrew Brown is a prolific translator from French to English. He has translated works by Pierre Bourdieu, Tzvetan Todorov, and Jean-François Lyotard, among many others.