Set in the 17th century, this is the true story of John Law, mathematical genius, duellist, inveterate gambler, womaniser and inventor of the first paper money.

From the Back Cover

Three centuries ago, in most Western countries, wealth was stored and exchanged in the form of gold and silver coins, and there was rarely enough of it to finance the extravagances of kings, let alone the expansion of industry and trade.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century a remarkable figure stepped onto the stage of world financial history. He was John Law, an Edinburgh Scot of striking appearance and charismatic personality with a mathematical gift amounting to genius, which he parlayed into a fortune from gambling on his travels around Europe. He had more than one motive for travel: he had eloped with another man's wife, and he had narrowly escaped execution after killing a man in a duel.

John Law arrived in Paris with an idea. If money were lent in the form of paper, properly backed by assets, then the same money could be lent several times over. Multiplied credit could be used to multiply opportunities for the making of money; finance capitalism could be born. In the teeth of opposition from powerful vested interests, Law won royal backing to set up the first French bank to issue paper currency. In addition he created a gigantic trading company whose assets would lie across the Atlantic Ocean and whose profits were to enrich shareholders beyond their wildest dreams. Their wealth was such that the word 'millionaire' was coined to describe them.

What followed was epic drama; fortunes were made and lost, paupers grew rich and lords fell into penury, a new philosophia fiscalis was born. The eighteenth-century innovations of John Law were to predict the credit economy we all take for granted today. In Janet Gleeson's enthralling tragi-comic story there are two great characters: John Law, with his complex personality and inscrutable motives; and money itself, which has has such a huge influence on history, and whose true nature to this day remains elusive.

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