The Great Swindle

The Story of the South Sea Bubble

First published in 1960, acclaimed American journalist and biographer Virginia Cowles provides rich background information on 18th century English politics and economic theories, as well as the story of a national speculation that became a national swindle. It is a “serious and scholarly study specifically concentrated on the financial swindle in all its ramifications, rather than on a portrait of the times.”

Here, in minute detail, Cowles charts both the Mississippi Bubble in France and the South Sea Bubble in England, as speculators and manipulators sold the public from the royal house down on a new way to absorb the gigantic national debts. That the promised dividends were to come out of non-existent resources and funds—backed by the presumed integrity of those who launched the scheme—was branded by Robert Walpole as “evil of the first magnitude.” Here was the initial “stock market swindle” in history, which spread to the launching of lesser swindles and highlighted the depravity of the age.

A fascinating historical read.

Illustrated throughout with portrait paintings.