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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2010
A survey of the financial history of France in the years from 1781 through 1787 reveals two interrelated developments: an unprecedented series of loans opened by the state in an effort to meet growing war and postwar expenses and to service a burdensome debt, and a speculative boom which thrived on the confusion of public and private finance which the French revenue system allowed. Both developments are of central importance in any inquiry into public finance in the decade, and thus in any explanation of the financial origins of the French Revolution. Both were fed in part by the unprecedented volume of capital and credit available on the Parisian Bourse as on other European capital markets in this decade. But to an extent too little comprehended, both the increase in public indebtedness and the speculative boom were assisted by investments from abroad, investments which helped to obscure the enormous and onerous public debt in a mask of apparent soundness by responding readily to repeated calls for credit, and which likewise helped sustain the speculative mania through the extension of credit to the speculators themselves. It is known that Genevan, Genoan, and Dutch credit played some role in these events. Indeed, Genevan commitments have, to a degree, been clarified. But the Genoan and Dutch roles have remained vague, always cited but never detailed. What will be attempted here is an analysis of the Dutch role, of the structure and method of Dutch investments in France during this period in which such investments made some contribution to maintaining the appearance of public solvency while assisting Bourse expansion.
1 Lüthy, Herbert, La Banque protestante en France de la révocation de l'edit de Nantes à la Révolution (2 vols., Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1959–1961)Google Scholar, II, passim, especially 468ff.; and Bouchary, Jean, Les Manieurs d'argent à Paris à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (3 vols., Paris: Marcel Rivière & Cie., 1939–1943), I, 11–101.Google Scholar
2 In 1770 and 1771, for example, the abbé Terray suspended payment on the bills of the farmers general and the rescriptions of the receivers general. See Coquelle, P., L'Alliance franco-hollandaise contre l'Angleterre, 1735–1788 (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1902), p. 209.Google Scholar This suspension of payments on short-term paper followed a series of arbitrary annuity reductions, beginning in 1764, which dangerously undermined French credit. Terray also reduced the return on part of the long-term French debt to accord with its market value. See Marion, Marcel, Histoire financière de la France depuis 1715 (6 vols., Paris: Librairie Arthur Rousseau, 1927–1928), I, 238–240, 252.Google Scholar See also: Bosher, John F., French Finances, 1770–1795, Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 98.Google Scholar
3 Physiocratic writers found England overburdened in comparison with France, since available estimates placed the debt service of the two states as roughly equal, and England was believed to have resources substantially less than those of France. See Bosher, French Finances, p. 23, and also Manger, Johannes Bernardus, Recherches sur les relations économiques entre la France et la Hollande pendant la Révolution française (1785–1795) (Paris: Librairie ancienne Honoré Champion, 1923), pp. 16–17.Google Scholar
J. E. D. Binney remarks that the period of the American War reversed a situation in which revenue surpluses had been employed in England to reduce the public debt, and brought instead a substantial increase in this debt. Furthermore, there was “widespread uneasiness” in England about the debt increase, specifically in the years between 1775 and 1785. See Binney, John Edward Douglas, British Public Finance and Administration, 1774–92 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), p. 111.Google Scholar
4 Manger, Recherches sur les relations économiques, pp. 16–17.
5 Dillen, Johannes Gerardus van, “Het Bedrijfsleven van Amsterdam in de achttiende eeuw,” in Zeven eeuwen Amsterdam, ed. by d'Ailly, A. E. et al. (6 vols., Amsterdam: Scheltema & Holkema, 1946–1951), IV, 88.Google Scholar
6 This is evident in the f.720,000 raised in November, 1781, for a Lyons firm by W. & J. Willink, distinctly apolitical, and by the f.1,100,000 loan of 1784 on behalf of vandenYver frères & Co. of Paris, floated by the pro-English firm of Hope & Co. See Nederlandsch Economisch-Historisch Archief, The Hague, collection of prospectuses in six dossiers, dossier III, items 83 and 87 (hereinafter N.E.H.A., Pros.). Moreover some evidence of indirect investment by apolitical rentiers appears in the case of the merchant and industrialist Pieter van Winter who held a substantial segment of the shares marketed in one of the loan operations opened by Stadnitski and Vollenhoven (see below, Table 4). See N.E.H.A., Archief Stadnitski en van Heukelom, loose bundles of lists of shareholders.
7 Coquelle, L'Alliance franco-hollandaise, pp. 261ff, 294ff.
8 According to Henry Hope, Dutch rentiers saved between one quarter and three-eights of their income. See Vreede, G. W., Mr. Laurens Pieter van de Spiegel en zijne tijdgenooten, 1737–1800 (4 vols., Middelburg: J. C. & W. Altorffer, 1874–1877), IV, 386,Google Scholar Hope to Lord Auckland, August, 1791. Hope also claimed that much of this income had of late and “… from the spirit of party” been placed in France. See also the discussion of preindustrial capitalism in the United Provinces in Klein, P. W., Kapitaal en stagnatie tijdens het Hollandse vroegkapitalisme (Rotterdam: Universitaire Pers, 1967).Google Scholar
9 As late as the spring of 1793, securities in two French issues were quoted at and above 90 on the 100 in Amsterdam. See Maandelijkse Nederlandsche Mercurius (Amsterdam), 27 May, 1793.Google Scholar In March, 1792, the firm of Strockel & van Dijk, in forming an investment trust on shares in corporate purchases of French life annuities, acquired these shares in Amsterdam at a surprisingly high 73 to 90 on the 100. See N.E.H.A., Pros., dossier III, item 196. Both of these quotations reflect a sustained over valuation of French issues.
10 Lüthy, La Banque protestante, II, 31. The calculation of the exchange between guilders and livres was based on monies of account, the French écu of three livres and the Dutch denier de gros. Par was 53 2/7ths deniers to the écu.
11 Harris, Robert D., “Necker's Compte Rendu of 1781: A Reconsideration,” Journal of Modem History, XLII, 2 (1970), 172.Google Scholar Harris points out that Necker distinguished between ordinary revenues and expenditures, and extraordinary revenues and expenditures, and that the balance of ordinary revenues with expenditures was the crucial point in determining fiscal solvency. Creditors felt secure when “… the ordinary revenues could support the carrying charges on the debt.” (Harris, p. 165.) Nonetheless, as Harris indicates, a temporary surplus of ordinary receipts over ordinary expenditures could not in the long run obscure an imbalance between extraordinary receipts and expenditures, and it is in this latter category that the massive debt of the 1770's and 1780's was accumulated.
12 Montyon, Antoine Jean Baptiste Auget de, Particularités et observations sur les ministres des finances de France les plus célèbres, depuis 1660 jusqu'en 1791 (Paris: Le Normant, 1812), pp. 245–46, 265.Google Scholar
13 Marion, Histoire financière, I, 295.
14 See, for example, Bosher, French Finances, p. xi.
15 Ibid., pp. 42, 303. This should not be taken to mean that there was no concept of adjusting expenses to income (which is what the word “budget” means). Turgot, for example, informed Louis XVI upon his own appointment as Controller General in 1774 that he would reduce expenditures to the point that they were 20 millions less than receipts. See Dakin, Douglas, Turgot and the “Ancien Regime” in France (New York: Octagon, 1965), p. 131.Google Scholar
16 Susane, G., La Tactique financière de Calonne (Paris: Arthur Rousseau, 1901), p. 79 and notes 1 and 2.Google Scholar According to Susane's research, Necker's first four and a half years as Director of the Royal Treasury produced loans of all types to the amount of about 530,000,000 l.t. with an average return of approximately 6.6 percent.
17 The return on the rentes viagères was calculated on the basis of existing information on the life expectancy of the population as a whole, thus without regard for the fact that investors would try to choose nominees with the greatest life expectancy. See Bailly, A., Histoire financière de la France, depuis l'origine de la monarchie jusqu'à la fin de 1786 (2 vols., Paris: Montardier, 1830), II, p. 220.Google Scholar
18 Marion, Histoire financière, I, 299; Linguet, S. N. H., De la dette nationale et du crédit public en France (Brussels, 1789), pp. 24ff.Google Scholar; Taylor, “Paris Bourse,” 961–962; and Lüthy, La Banque protestante, II, 490ff.
19 The greater expense for the borrower in a life annuity over a perpetual annuity was in the much greater length of time before the former could be retired. Taylor, “Paris Bourse,” 964, correcting Marion, Histoire financière, I, 295, cites an example. “If the state borrowed 60,000,000 at 5 per cent and amortized the principal at 5 per cent per annum, it would have liquidated it in fourteen years at a cost of less than 26,000,000 in interest. But a 9 per cent annuity loan of the same amount would last sixty years and cost over 104,000,000.”
20 Some elementary efforts were made in eighteenth-century France and the United Provinces to draw up actuarial tables and in general to gauge life expectancy. And in the life annuity negotiation opened by Johannes Bouman in 1782, life expectancy tables constructed by Nicolas Struyck, perhaps the best known of all eighteenth-century Dutch authorities, were consulted. N.E.H.A., Pros., dossier III, item 90. See also text below.
21 Some of the life annuities issued under Louis XV had distinguished among age groups. See Marion, Histoire financière, I, 295. The rente viagère issue of January, 1782, made a primitive effort to distinguish among age groups by offering a ten percent annuity on one nominee aged 1 through 49 years, eleven percent on a nominee aged 50 through 60, and twelve percent on one aged 61 and over. All contracts on two nominees were at nine percent. See N.E.H.A., Pros., dossier III, items 105 and 106.
22 Ibid., dossier III, item 109. “… beeter in den smaak van 't Publicq.…”
23 For example, the lottery loan created in 1777 granted the bulk of its prizes in perpetual annuities at four percent per annum, but, for one fourth of the tickets, offered life annuities ranging from 12½ to an incredible 4,166 percent return. Gemeente Archief, Amsterdam, Archief Brants, dossier 94 (hereinafter G.A.).
24 The Dutch term negotiatie has no counterpart in English. It may be defined as an investment undertaking opened to subscription through the services of an agent (usually a banker) who negotiated the terms, a broker who assessed the market, and a commission agent who marketed shares. All functions could be combined. The negotiation offered for public or limited subscription a proportional share in common property or other hypothecated security specified in the prospectus, and composed of any of several types of property ranging from other securities to anticipated tax revenues to the mere pledge of the borrower to repay.
25 Manger, Recherches sur les relations économiques, p. 60, citing P. J. Blok, Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche volk, 2nd ed., III, 548.
26 Colenbrander, H. T., De Patriottentijd (3 vols., The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1897–1899), II, 80, note 3.Google Scholar
27 See also note 16 above. Another estimate from the Nieuwe Nederlandsche Jaarboek (XVI, 1781, 38–39)Google Scholar suggests a total of f.280,000,000 in France in 1781. The source for this estimate is not given and the amount is so exaggerated (unless it is intended to include commercial investments) as not to be credible.
28 Coquelle, L'Alliance franco-hollandaise, passim, especially pp. 341–342. Alfred Cobban disputes Coquelle's estimate of Thulemeyer's role, maintaining that the Prussian ambassador did not, as Coquelle argues, pursue a consistent policy against alliance between the United Provinces and France. Rather, Cobban says, Thulemeyer followed no consistent policy to the extent that the British ambassador, Harris, thought Thulemeyer pro-French, while the marquis de Vèrac, French ambassador, thought him pro-English. See Cobban, Alfred, Ambassadors and Secret Agents (London: Jonathan Cape, 1954), p. 58.Google Scholar In any case, Thulemeyer might have exaggerated Dutch investments in France.
29 Alice C. Carter has suggested, on the basis of the inventories of the collateral succession tax preserved in the municipal archives of Amsterdam, that Dutch investments in France increased between 1779–1780 and 1789–1790 from 4 percent to 18.6 percent of all Dutch investments abroad outside England. Unfortunately the collateral succession inventories are not a reliable gauge of such matters because they do not take into account indirect Dutch investments in France or investments in stock substitution undertakings in which the security on which the negotiation was based was not stated in the estate inventory. See Carter, Alice C., “Dutch Foreign Investment, 1738–1800,” Economica, XX, New Series (November, 1953),Google Scholarpassim, especially 337; idem, “Dutch Foreign Investment, 1738–1800, in the Light of the Amsterdam ‘Collateral Succession’ Inventories,” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, LXVI (1953), 27–38Google Scholar; and Wilson, Charles H., “Dutch Investment in Eighteenth-Century England, A Note on Yardsticks,” Economic History Review, XII, Series 2 (1959–1960), 434–439.Google Scholar
30 G. A., Archief Brants, dossier 94, J. H. Hautot to J. J. Brants, 19 March, 1773. Brants' wife inherited the 25,000 l.t. in 1772 from the estate of J. I. de Neufville. See also ibid., dossiers 123 and 124. French annuity loans often permitted the investor to match cash subscriptions with a proportionate amount of depreciated state paper.
31 Ibid., dossier 130. The return on these contracts was subject to a ten percent per annum deduction. P. & C. van Eeghen, a firm involved in investments in America, expanded its holdings of French rentes in much the same manner as Brants. The principals of the firm had had contracts totaling 12,000 l.t. settled on them and on their sister while the three were children, in 1757. No evidence survives of other French placements until the 1780's, by which time the firm employed Stadnitski to handle its French investments. During the 1780's life annuities totalling 23,000 l.t. in capital were acquired. See G. A., Archief van Eeghen, P3/a.Moreover, van Eeghen invested in the Stadnitski and Vollenhoven negotiation labelled class A, and perhaps in others (for which lists of shareholders have not survived). See N.E.H.A., Archief Stadnitski en van Heukelom, loose bundles of lists of shareholders.
32 G. A., Archief Brants, dossiers 97, 123, 130, and 156. Brants' French investments suffered as did all others under the forced conversion and reduction of annuity and principal in 1797. Continuing high costs in exchange and in commission charges further consumed the return and capital. See, for example, ibid., dossier 97, J. J. Brants to Hautot & Augenet, 7 March, 1799.
Brants' treatment of the rente viagère income is informative about his attitude toward that form of investment. He in effect amortized the capital, deducting all from the return in excess of three percent and applying this excess to a reduction of the capital. Ibid., dossier 127.
33 Ibid., dossiers 127 and 130. Thirty thousand guilders of this total was held through shares in the Couderc & Brants negotiation of 1 March, 1787.
34 N.E.H.A., Archief Ketwich en Voombergh, dossier “Een pak met bewijzen van afgedane zaken, over de jaren 1776, 1777, 1797, 1801, 1775.” A list in the same dossier indicates holdings of 1,303,848 l.t. in the loan of January, 1782, transferred by Fizeaux, Grand & Co. of Amsterdam to its sister house in Paris to be held for the former.
35 At least one other firm, A. & S. Boas of The Hague, made an effort to sell these annuity contracts in the United Provinces. See N.E.H.A., Pros., dossier V, items 5 and 47.
36 Ibid., dossier III, item 182; and G. A., Archief Brants, dossier 127. The negotiation was dissolved in. 1791 when participants exchanged their shares for proportional amounts of the negotiation's assets in annuity contracts.
37 N.E.H.A., Pros., dossier III, items 114 and 115. The terms of this issue provided for its redemption in ten years. At redemption each note could be exchanged for a life annuity of nine percent on one nominee or eight on two. In addition, lottery premiums in the amount of 800,000 l.t. were added as yet another inducement. The loan was initially opened to cash subscription and, when this produced an inadequate response, was turned over to a few bankers on short-term drafts.
38 Letter, E. Clavière to P. Stadnitski, 15 January, 1786, and idem to idem, 27 January, and 6 February, 1786, Archives Nationales, Etienne Clavière papers, T°6463 (hereinafter A. N., Clavière papers).
39 Bouchary, Les Manieurs d'argent, I, 86–87, E. Clavière to P. Stadnitski, 6 March, 1786. Part of the Clavière-Stadnitski and Clavière-Cazenove correspondence is reproduced by Bouchary.
40 Ibid., I. 85, E. Clavière to T. Cazenove, 5 January, 1786. See also the letter from Clavière to Stadnitski, 6 January, 1786, A. N., Clavière papers, T°6463, in which Clavière wrote: “… M. Haller [the banker in question] a offert, à ce qu'on assure, de plus longs termes aux Hollandais.” Some confusion shortly developed over the extent to which these bankers actually covered such an enormous part of the loan. See ibid., Clavière to Stadnitski, 9 and 13 January, 1786.
41 Clavière's first contact with Stadnitski appears to have occurred through the agency of Théophile Cazenove, a small-time broker and merchant with extensive family connections in London, Paris, and Geneva. In 1782 Clavière tried unsuccessfully to induce Cazenove to sponsor a negotiation based on the model of Genevan projects on French life annuities. Ibid., T°6461, T°6462, T°6463, and T°6465, A similar effort by Genevan bankers in 1779 also failed. See Lüthy, La Banque protestante, II, 516.
42 Taylor, “Paris Bourse,” 963–964.
43 A. N., Clavière papers, T°6462, T°6463, and T°6465.
44 Letter, Clavière to Stadnitski, 7 October, 1785, and idem to idem, 9 December, 1785, ibid., T°6462. The prospect of a loan on 20,000 l.t. in life annuities was broached late in 1784, but nothing survives of any firm agreement. Clavière to Stadnitski, 26 November, 1784, ibid., T°6461. As early as 1778, while still in Geneva, Clavière had borrowed f.30,000 on shares in the Caisse d'escompte from a Haarlem rentier. See Bouchary, Les Manieurs d'argent, I, 13–14.
45 A. N., Clavière papers, T°6465. The total borrowed on these stocks was f.245,034, which was spread among twenty-one creditors. At other times, beginning in December, 1785, Clavière had varying numbers of these stocks on loan through Stadnitski. Furthermore, Clavière had 43,000 l.t. from the December, 1785, loan of 80,000,000 hypothecated with Stadnitski. And when Stadnitski's agency dried up as a source of credit, in the spring of 1786, Clavière turned to Cazenove to arrange loans on the security of various types of paper. See A. N., Clavière papers, T°6465.
46 Ibid., Clavière to Stadnitski, 13 January, and 31 March, 1786, T°6463.
47 N.E.H.A., Pros., dossier III, items 83–85, 87, 88, 92, 139, 140, and 145; the dossier “Plans d'emprunts divers fait à Amsterdam,” in a bound folio of prospectuses in the Universiteit Bibliotheek, Amsterdam, 565B14; and Lüthy, La Banque protestante, II, 525–26, 545–46.
48 Nor do we have a complete list of such operations. The prospectuses of these negotiations were never systematically preserved and only scattered collections survive. In any case, it is clear that the commitments of Amsterdam investors to French firms were extensive. By the 1790's firms in Amsterdam and Paris were intertwined to the degree that they were obliged to support one another against failure. When in July, 1792, the Parisian house of Tourton & Ravel was faced with the prospect of suspending payments, some 930,000 l.t. was, according to a knowledgeable source, subscribed in Amsterdam by way of assistance. See Bouchary, Les Manieurs d'argent, III, 67, note 34.
49 N.E.H.A., Pros., dossier III, item 87.
50 Ibid., dossier III, item 139; and N.E.H.A., Archief Ketwich en Voombergh, Notten diversen, folios 13–14.
51 Lüthy, La Banque protestante, II, 516–17.
52 N.E.H.A., Pros., dossier III, item 134. This loan was opened in cooperation with Girardot, Haller & Cie. of Paris, and may have been related to the tontine which the due d'Orleans launched in 1785. See Bouchary, Jean, Les Compagnies financières à Paris à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (3 vols, Paris: Marcel Rivière & Cie., 1940–1942), I, 9–10Google Scholar and note 10; and Lüthy, La Banque protestante, II, 530–32.
53 N.E.H.A., Pros., dossier V, item 32.
54 Ibid., dossier III, items 94 and 95.
55 Ibid.
56 G. A., notary C. van Homrigh, 12402/130. It was necessary to transfer subscriptions to Paris where the loan was eventually oversubscribed. See Lüthy, La Banque protestante, II, 487ff.
57 Marion, Histoire financière, I, 264. See also note 2 above.
58 Lüthy, La Banque protestante, II, 438ff., details substantial Dutch support for colonial commercial ventures undertaken by French merchants between 1769 and 1777. Such credit extensions were, however, short-term. Of the French loans in the 1770's, only that of November, 1779, appears to have attracted much Dutch investment. See Ibid., II, 506, note 49.
59 Manger, Recherches sur les relations économiques, p, 16; and Lüthy, La Banque protestante, II, 521. Annuity and redemption payments in the 1781 loan were guaranteed by the States General of the. United Provinces. See Winter, P. J. van, Het. Aandeel van den Amsterdamschen handel aan den opbouw van het Amerikaansche Gemeenebest, Werken uitgegeven door de Vereeniging het Nederlandsch Economisch-Historisch Archief, Vols. VII and IX (2 vols., The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1927–1933), I, 55.Google Scholar
60 Marion, Histoire financière, I, 342, note 2.
61 Manger, Recherches sur les relations économiques, p. 61.
62 The arrangement was discontinued in 1788, and Hogguer, Grand & Co., successors to Fizeaux, Grand & Co., appointed in the following year as French bankers in Amsterdam. See Morris, Gouvemeur, A Diary of the French Revolution, ed. by Davenport, B. C. (2 vols., London: G. G. Harrap, 1939), I, p. 278.Google Scholar Joly de Fleury had appointed Henri Fizeaux and Georges Grand “banquiers des affaires de France in Amsterdam” in 1782. See Lüthy, La Banque protestante, II, 617.
63 See the references cited for Table 4. At least f.5,589,000 of this amount was actually subscribed and more may have been. Information is wanting only on Stadnitski's third negotiation of December, 1784, and on the two ventures opened by J. Menkema.
64 The evidence surrounding even indirect investment offers pitfalls. Lüthy, La Banque protestante, II, 536, details modest investments from Amsterdam in the loan of December, 1783, for which data in the French archives are most nearly complete. But his list does not include the annuities purchased by Stadnitski and Vollenhoven except for their third negotiation of December, 1784, and there Lüthy gives as the buyers the agents in whose names the annuities were registered, and not Stadnitski and Vollenhoven. Here and presumably elsewhere the annuities were acquired secondhand.
65 The Genevans selected maidens of four to seven years, all of whom had survived smallpox and were generally of good health and from families of sufficient means to offer them the best prospect of longevity. Marion, Histoire, financière, I, 299; Linguet, De la dette nationale, pp. 24ff.; Taylor, “Paris Bourse,” 961–62; and Lüthy, La Banque protestante, II, 478ff., and 490ff.
66 The Fizeaux negotiation which followed shortly, on 1 June, 1782, was organized by a group of five Amsterdam bankers and brokers. Of the members at least four were decidedly pro-French, and all belonged to, or were closely associated with Amsterdam regent families. The accounts of this operation may be found in N.E.H.A., Kleine Aanwinsten, No. 355.
67 N.E.H.A., Pros., dossier III, item 90.
68 At the then current rate of exchange, 56 deniers de gros to the écu, f. 1,128,000 would have covered the cost of the contracts at par, leaving at least f.72,000 for expenses and commission. Bouman pledged to return any surplus to the shareholders at the time of the first dividend payment.
69 Premium payments were to be increased as possible from revenues remaining after payment of interest and redemptions. The prospectus placed no limit on the commission Bouman might retain and, in fact, put the matter in the hands of trustees who were appointed to safeguard the interests of the investors, but who were appointed by the director. After the first two years the number of shares withdrawn and annulled would be expanded to 40 a year, with a premium the size of which would depend on the difference between the return on annuity contracts and the dividends and expenses which the negotiation had to meet. The trustees were to set the premium rate.
70 On Struyck, see Bouwstoffen voor de geschiedenis van de levensvenekeringen en lijfrenten in Nederland, ed. by the direction of the Algemeene Maatschappij van Levensverzekering en Lijfrente (Amsterdam, 1897), pp. 107–116Google Scholar; and, among Struyck's works, Volllgraff, J. A., ed., Les Oeuvres de Nicolas Struyck, trans, by the editor (Amsterdam, 1912).Google Scholar
71 To illustrate: assume that six deaths occurred among the first six nominees, here designated as A, B, C, D, E, and F. All contracts in which two of these nominees were paired, fifteen in number, would lapse (A/B, A/C, A/D, A/E, A/F, B/C, B/D, B/E, B/F, C/D, and so forth). That would be the maximum number of lapses. If deaths were distributed in any other fashion among all nominees then the incidence of contracts lapsing would have varied from 0 to 14.
72 G. A., Stadnitski and' van Heukelom papers on loan from the N.E.H.A., the dossier entitled “Stukken betreffende de diverse negotiates, 1793–1858.”
73 Berghuis, Willem Hendrik, Ontstaan en ontwikkeling van de Nederlandse beleggingsfondsen tot 1914 (Assen: Van Gorcum & Co., 1967)Google Scholar, has analyzed the origins of the investment trust in the United Provinces in the eighteenth century. He was able to isolate only three examples, and found incomplete sources to detail these three. In fact there were several more investment trusts according to Berghuis' definition, of which Stadnitski's 1782 negotiation is but one example.
74 Most domestic issues available to the investor in 1782 paid a nominal return not exceeding 3 percent, and often as little as 2½ percent. The real return, where there was any difference, was only slightly higher, reaching perhaps 3½ percent in rare cases.
75 The return on foreign loans opened in Amsterdam varied more than that on domestic loans. In 1782 Russia, attempted to raise six million at 4½ percent, Sweden one million and a quarter at 4 percent, and Poland one million at 5 percent. See N:E.H.A., Pros., dossier III, items 9 and 127, and dossier V, item 163. This range, from four to five percent, is representative of most foreign issues in the early 1780's.
76 .The average exchange rate between Dutch and French monies of account in the 1780's was about 54. deniers.de gros to the écu of three livres. By January, 1793, the rate was 17–3/8ths.
77 The 1796 payments were made in.two types of securities. For the first, which totaled three-fourths of the annuity due. that year, Stadnitski's 1784 negotiation could salvage only one and one half percent of face value. In the second type, which paid off the remaining one fourth, the participants in Stadnitski's negotiation settled for twenty percent of face value. See N.E.H.A., Archief Stadnitski en van Heukelom, “Grootboek van de negotiatie groot f.750,000 op Fransche lijfrenten onder directie van Pieter Stadnitski en Hendk. Vollenhoven.”
78 The yield on the 368,000 l.t. paid Stadnitski's 1784 negotiation in 1797 was about 2¼ percent of the original investment, but only 1.6 percent after the deduction of expenses and commission. For the remaining one third, the return of 8 percent was reduced to a nominal 5 percent, and that was paid in perpetual annuities which could be disposed of only at a discount. Ibid., the dossiers ‘Diverse documenten, descharges, particuliere beschieden, enz., I and II,” and “Rekening van de negotiatie van i Januari 1785, groot f.228,000.”
79 Vreede, , Mr. Laurens Pieter van de Spiegel, IV, 386, Hope to Lord Auckland, August, 1791.Google Scholar
