Show Notes
The French Revolution was a bloody fight for liberty, equality and fraternity. But it was also a battle over money.
In part 1 of our series on the French Revolution, host Robin Wigglesworth explores the revolution’s economic origins with Rebecca Spang, historian and author of Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution. They look at the time of the ‘ancien régime’ and the reign of King Louis XVI, to the storming of the Bastille and the development of a controversial new currency called, at different times, both a “saviour of France” and a “poison".
Further reading: Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution by Rebecca L. Spang
Vote for us! The Story of Money has been nominated for a Signal Award in the Money & Finance category. It’s a Listener Choice award, which means we need your help. Vote for us to win here. We appreciate your support!
To enjoy future episodes, be sure to subscribe to The Story of Money wherever you get your podcasts, also on the show's dedicated YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@FTTheStoryOfMoney
Host: Robin Wigglesworth Senior Producer: Michela Tindera Executive producer: Kate Ford Original music and sound design: Breen Turner Video editor: Michael Saliba Podcast development: Laura Clarke FT global head of audio: Flo Phillips
Learn more at www.ft.com/tsom or get in touch at [email protected].
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from The Story of Money
The French Revolution was a bloody fight for liberty, equality and fraternity. But it was also a battle over money.
The first world war was one of the deadliest conflicts the world has ever seen. And when the US entered the war in 1917, it faced a massive financial challenge: how to pay for its contribution? Enter Treasury Secretary William McAdoo who launches the groundbreaking Liberty Loan Programme and - alongside an unprecedented national propaganda campaign featuring silent film stars like Charlie Chaplin, Girl Scouts, even a captured German submarine in Central Park - encourages thousands of Americans to ‘buy a bond’ as part of their patriotic duty.
The US Treasury market - the world's largest government bond market - is worth about $32tn today, making it the largest pile of debt accumulated in history. But its roots lie in medieval Venice, a bloody military disaster and a leader who was forced to raise a loan to fund a war against the Byzantine Empire.
How do you tell if an economy is actually working? Most economics classes point to controlled inflation, steady growth, or low unemployment - but what if the level of financial fraud is the real hidden indicator?
Long before Silicon Valley, the grandson of a 15th Century German peasant named Jakob Fugger built a mining and banking empire that dwarfed today’s tech titans, accumulating a fortune estimated at $4 trillion in today’s terms. Richer than the Medici, Rockefeller or Elon Musk, he was the ultimate financial mastermind who bought imperial elections, legalised interest-bearing loans, and inadvertently sparked the Protestant Reformation.