French+Money+in+the+18th+Century


 * During the 18th Century, what were the currency and the history of French Money?**

By the 18th century, France was one of the world’s richest nations. Before the 18th Century, écu was used mostly as French coin. The first écu was a gold coin and it was minted during the reign of Louis IX of France, in 1266. From 1690 to 1725, new écus were issued and existing écus revalued, leading to the change in currency of France. After 1726, the final écu was decided at six livres tournois, however, the écu soon disappeared during the French Revolution.



During the time, France had a issue of paper money with the big companies or states, not banks. The first French paper money was issued in 1701and it helped to bring a timme of great boom to the economy of France via with the economic leadership of John Law. John Law as a succesful banker and in 1716, he started a bank. He made the paper money while the state previously was wallowing in debt and Law created an economic boom via his issue of paper money, which he built to a point where it was more valuable than the coinage in use. He then extended his reach to the trade between France and its colonies in the New World. However, when it was found out that his boss decided to print more paper money to gain his wealth, everone else got a rude shock as for the first time the value of the French livre tok a dive down and never recovered. The paper money went burst in 1720 and became the worthless paper.



In the end of 18th century, a system was put in place to stabilize the monetary system using coinage, and the paper money was not reintroduced until the 1776. The paper money was issued alongside the assignats from 1789 until 1793. Assignats were legal tender certificates issued during the revolution, however, their value soon diminished, and so the last of the livre coins and //paper money// were issued in 1794.



__**Citations**__
 * 1) "Ecu - Ecus d'or, écus à la couronne, au porc-épic, à la salamandre, etc." //Accueil//. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Dec. 2011. .
 * 2) "John Law (economist) - eNotes.com Reference." //eNotes - Literature Study Guides, Lesson Plans, and More.//. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Dec. 2011. .
 * 3) "Les réformes de la monarchie constitutionnelle." //Bienvenue sur Histoire-fr.com!//. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Dec. 2011. .