The Mississippi Company (; founded 1684, named the Company of the West from 1717, and the Company of the Indies from 1719) was a corporation holding a business monopoly in French colonies in North America and the West Indies. In 1717, the Mississippi Company received a royal grant with exclusive trading rights for 25 years. The rise and fall of the company is connected with the activities of the Scottish financier and economist John Law who was then the Controller General of Finances of France. When the speculation in French financial circles, and the land development in the region became frenzied and detached from economic reality, the Mississippi bubble became one of the earliest examples of an economic bubble. History The Compagnie du Mississippi was originally chartered in 1684 by the request of René-Robert Cavelier (de La Salle) who sailed in that year from France with a large expedition with the intention of founding a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi. The expedition did not succeed in this goal; they actually founded a settlement in the vicinity of present-day Victoria, Texas, but even this was short-lived. In May 1716, Scottish economist John Law, who had been appointed Controller General of Finances of France under the Duke of Orléans, created the Banque Générale Privée ("General Private Bank"). It was one of the first European financial institutions to develop the use of paper money. It was a private bank, but three-quarters of the capital consisted of government bills and government-accepted notes. In August 1717, Law bought the Mississippi Company to help the French colony in Louisiana. In the same year Law conceived a joint-stock trading company called the Compagnie d'Occident (The Mississippi Company, or, literally, "Company of [the] West"). Law was named the Chief Director of this new company, which was granted a trade monopoly of the West Indies and North America by the French government. The company was involved in the Atlantic slave trade, importing African slaves to Louisiana. Banque Royale The bank became the Banque Royale (Royal Bank) in 1718, meaning the notes were guaranteed by the king, Louis XV of France. The company absorbed the Compagnie des Indes Orientales ("Company of the East Indies"), the Compagnie de Chine ("Company of China"), and other rival trading companies and became the Compagnie Perpétuelle des Indes on 23 May 1719 with a monopoly of French commerce on all the seas. Simultaneously,