ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the transformation of the Paris Stock Market by focusing on a series of reforms set in place during the 1770s and 1780s. Boldly comparing these changes to Margaret Thatcher’s British “Big Bang” 200 years later, Le Goff presents a new picture of this vital era as one of immense and occasionally anxiety-provoking dynamism and creativity in the French stock market. This chapter takes as its central focus the institutional effects of Finance Minister Alexandre de Calonne’s March 1786 Order in Council, which enlarged the pool of official stockbrokers from 40 to 60 and transformed the status of the office from an appointed to a venal one. Historians have often viewed government actions toward the stock market during this time as a series of short-sighted attempts by the financially strapped French monarchy to extort a low-cost loan from an organized body of men who were suppliers of state or para-state services. Le Goff, however, shows how this measure can be viewed differently, as a step toward a liberal transformation of the French money market in order to achieve growth and prosperity (and more state revenue), to be brought about by relaxing control over market intermediaries.
