Economy & Finance in the 18th century

76 sourced entries, 1702 CE to 1799 CE, oldest first. Also see Economy & Finance across every century or everything else in the 18th century.

• 1702November 22 – The Dutch East India Company ship Amsterdam (1691) founders en route from Bombay to Basra during a storm with the loss of all hands.source
• 1703April 21 – The Company of Quenching of Fire (i.e., a fire brigade) is founded in Edinburgh, Scotland.source
• 1708The Company of Merchants of London Trading (with consent of the Parliament of Great Britain) merges with the East Indies, and the more recently established English Company Trading to the East Indies, to form the United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies, known as the Honourable East India Company.source
• 1710May 6 – The South Sea Company begins.source
• 1711September 8 – The South Sea Company receives a Royal Charter in Britain.source
• 1711December 13 – Wall Street in New York City becomes the city's first official slave market for the sale and rental of enslaved Africans and Indians.source
• 1712June 11 – Chatham, Barnstable County, Massachusetts is incorporated as a town.source
• 1715October 11 – William Aislabie resigns as the British East India Company's administrator of Bombay and the company's territories and is replaced at year's end by Charles Boone.source
• 1716May 20 – John Law founds the Banque Générale Privée in Paris.source
• 1720June 25 – The "South Sea Bubble", the phenomenal growth of the South Sea Company, reaches its peak as South Sea stock is priced at £1,060 a share. By the end of September, as panic sales are made, the price falls to £150.source
• 1720July 12 – Under the authority of the Bubble Act, the Lords Justices in Great Britain attempt to curb some of the excesses of the stock markets during the "South Sea Bubble". They dissolve a number of petitions for patents and charters, and abolish more than 80 joint-stock companies of dubious merit, but this has little effect on the creation of "Bubbles", ephemeral joint-stock companies created during the hysteria of the times.source
• 1720September 30 – "South Sea Bubble": The English stock market crashes, with dropping prices for stock in the South Sea Company.source
• 1720Parallel to the English South Sea Bubble France experiences the Mississippi Bubble. Market shares of the Mississippi Company reach a peak price of over 10,000 livres in spring just to plummet to 1,000 by the end of the year. Monthly inflation in France reaches 23 percent and a bank rush ensues when investors try in vain to convert paper notes issued by the Banque Royale into gold and silver. John Law, the Scottish architect of the Bubble, is forced to flee the country.source
• 1723August 11 – The Ostend Company is chartered by merchants and shipowners to establish trade for the Austrian Netherlands in the East Indies and West Indies. Over the next two days, 54 major investors in Antwerp purchase the shares of stock in the company.source
• 1724September 24 – The Paris Bourse, the stock exchange for France, is created by order of King Louis XV on the advice of Nicolas Ravot d'Ombreval, four years after a financial panic had shut down trading. Stock markets had already been set up in Lyon, Bourdeaux and Toulouse.source
• 1725June 23 – The Malt tax riots begin in Scotland in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, after the price of beer and scotch whisky increases. Earlier in the year, the British government extended the taxes in England on malted grain to brewers and distilleries in Scotland. The rioting then spreads throughout Scottish counties.source
• 1725Freemasonry is established in France, as an English import.source
• 1726June 11 – André-Hercule de Fleury, recalled from exile by King Louis XV of France (his former pupil), forces banishment of Louis Henri, Duke of Bourbon, the Prime Minister, and the Duke's mistress Madame de Prie from court. Financier Jean Pâris de Monmartel is also removed from his position as Guard of the Royal Treasury.source
• 1727May 31 – The Royal Bank of Scotland is founded by Royal Charter in Edinburgh.source
• 1727June 27 – Uxbridge, Massachusetts, is incorporated as a town.source
• 1727December 8 – For the first time since the union of England and Scotland into Great Britain, the Royal Bank of Scotland, which still retains the right to print currency, issues its first pound note, printing paper currency for twenty shillings. The Scottish pound note continues to be printed until 2001 and the smallest denomination now is a five pound note.source
• 1729April 3 – Benjamin Franklin, aged 23, writes the essay "A Modest Enquiry Into the Nature and Necessity of Paper Currency" and later applies the economic principles to backing of paper money used in the United States.source
• 1733April 6 – After British Prime Minister Robert Walpole's proposed excise tax bill results in rioting over the imposition of additional taxes and the use of government agents to collect them, Walpole informs the House of Commons that he will withdraw the legislation.source
• 1735September 14 – The Kingdom of France approves the issue of "card money" in the total amount of 200,000 livres to serve as currency in its Louisiana territory in America.source
• 1738February 20 – The Swedish Levant Company is founded.source
• 1741The Royal Order of Scotland in freemasonry is founded.source
• 1743April 3 – Prithvi Narayan Shah becomes the new King of the Gorkha Kingdom and begins a campaign to unify the 54 different principalities in the Himalayas under his rule as part of the unification of Nepalsource
• 1744May 11 – Russia's treasury begins an effort to reduce the number of copper five-kopeck pieces (20 of which equal a Russian ruble) by declaring that it will buy them back at a ruble for every 20 until August 1, after which kopecks would be redeemed at a ruble for every 25; then at the rate of 33 for a ruble on October 1, and 50 for a ruble on and after August 28, 1746.source
• 1758J. R. Geigy, predecessor of Novartis, a global pharmaceutical brand, founded in Basel, Switzerland.source
• 1758Okadaya (岡田屋), predecessor of AEON, a multiple retailer group, founded in Yokkaichi, Japan.source
• 1759January 11 – In Philadelphia, the first American life insurance company is incorporated.source
• 1759March 4–November 20 – Étienne de Silhouette serves as Controller-General of France and attempts major financial reforms.source
• 1761Faber-Castell Company is founded by Kasper Faber in Nuremberg, Germany.source
• 1762May 26 – Dissatisfied with the progress of the French and Indian War, King George III dismisses his Prime Minister, the Duke of Newcastle, and replaces him with his former tutor, Tory politician John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute. The Bute ministry lasts less than a year before Stuart's resignation in 1763.source
• 1763March 1 – Charles Townshend becomes President of the Board of Trade in the British government.source
• 1763July 7 – The British East India Company declares Mir Qasim, the Nawab of Bengal, to be deposed.source
• 1763August 3 and 4 – Amsterdam banking crisis: The spectacular bankruptcies of Leendert Pieter de Neufville and Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky lead to a financial contagion which in the following days affects many merchants in Amsterdam, Hamburg, Berlin and Stockholm.source
• 1767March 13 – British Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend, having already pushed through the unpopular Townshend Acts to recoup war expenses from Britain's American colonies, presents a comprehensive plan for more taxes in a closed door session of the House of Commons, with most proposals passed within a month.source
• 1767August 26 – Construction begins on Tryon Palace in New Bern, North Carolina. The construction proves more expensive than initially expected, leading the government to increase local taxes. This stirs resentment among some North Carolinians, and helps prolong the War of the Regulation.source
• 1767October 24 – In France, several anti-Jewish regulations in place since October 12, 1661, are repealed by the King's Council that advises Louis XV. While Jewish merchants are still prohibited from owning their own retail stores, they are allowed to sell merchandise on credit to gentile merchants at legal interest rates, to legally enforce debts, and to sell jewelry.source
• 1768December 21 – King Prithvi Narayan Shah unifies several small kingdoms to establish modern-day Nepal; this dynasty will end in 2008.source
• 1772June 10 – The crisis of 1772 is triggered when, following the flight of their partner Alexander Fordyce to France, the London banking house of Neal, James, Fordyce and Down (which has been speculating in East India Company stock) suspends payment. The resultant panic causes other banks to fail, extends to Scotland, Amsterdam and the Thirteen Colonies and threatens the East India Company with bankruptcy.source
• 1775May 17 – American Revolution: The Continental Congress bans trade with Canada.source
• 1780The Jameson Irish Whiskey distillery is founded in Dublin, Ireland.source
• 1781April 18 – Future New York mayor James Duane, North Carolina representative William Sharpe and future Connecticut governor Oliver Wolcott deliver the first report to the U.S. Continental Congress about the national debt and report it to be 24,057,157 and 2/5 dollars.source
• 1781June 12 – Ohmiya (近江屋), as predecessor for Takeda, a major worldwide pharmaceutical brand, is founded in Doshomachi (道修町), Osaka, Japan.source
• 1782January 7 – The first American commercial bank (Bank of North America) opens.source
• 1782January 15 – Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris goes before the United States Congress to recommend establishment of a national mint and decimal coinage.source
• 1783April 18 – Three-Fifths Compromise: The first instance of black slaves in the United States of America being counted as three-fifths of persons (for the purpose of taxation), is included in a resolution of the Congress of the Confederation (this is later adopted in the 1787 Constitution).source
• 1784July 9 – The Bank of New York opens as the first in New York state and continues to operate under that name for almost 223 years until being acquired by Mellon Financial and becoming BNY Mellon.source
• 1785July 6 – The dollar (and a decimal currency system) is unanimously chosen as the money unit for the United States by the Congress of the Confederation.source
• 1785September 13 – The Bank of North America, central bank for the Confederation Congress government, loses its charter.source
• 1786March 1 – The Ohio Company of Associates is organized by five businessmen at a meeting at the Bunch-of-Grapes Tavern in Boston to purchase land from the United States government to form settlements in the modern-day U.S. state of Ohio.source
• 1786August 18 – The Kingdom of Denmark-Norway charters six settlements in Iceland to trade with it, thus ending the Danish–Icelandic Trade Monopoly, and founding Reykjavík.source
• 1786October 16 – The Confederation Congress establishes the United States Mint to make common coinage and currency for the U.S., to replace individual state coins.source
• 1787March 17 – The Bank of North America, the central bank of the United States government under the Articles of Confederation, is re-incorporated after its charter had expired in 1786.source
• 1787April 25 – The Customs and Excise Act 1787 receives Royal assent. It replaced all customs duties, which included poundage, by a system where individual tariffs would be applied to importations.source
• 1788May 10 – The Royal Dramatic Theatre (Kungliga Dramatiska Teatern), Sweden's national drama company, is founded.source
• 1789July 4 – The U.S. Congress passes its first bill, the Tariff of 1789, setting out tariffs.source
• 1790August 4 – A newly passed U.S. tariff act creates the system of cutters for revenue enforcement (later named the United States Revenue Cutter Service), the forerunner of the Coast Guard.source
• 1791February 8 – The Bank of the United States, based in Philadelphia, is incorporated by the federal government with a 20-year charter and started with $10,000,000 capital.source
• 1792April 2 – The Coinage Act is passed, establishing the United States Mint.source
• 1792May 17 – The Buttonwood Agreement is signed, beginning the New York Stock Exchange.source
• 1792The State Street Corporation is founded, in Boston, Massachusetts.source
• 1792The Insurance Company of North America (later Chubb) is founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.source
• 1793June 21 – The town of Hamilton, Massachusetts, is incorporated.source
• 1794January 1 – The Stibo Group is founded by Niels Lund as a printing company in Aarhus (Denmark).source
• 1794March 22 – Congress prohibits American ships from supplying slaves to any nation other than the United States, setting a penalty of forfeiture of the ship and a $2,000 fine.source
• 1795Jim Beam is founded as Old Jake Beam Sour Mash.source
• 1797February 26 – Bank Restriction Act removes the requirement for the Bank of England (the national bank of Great Britain) to convert banknotes into gold – Restriction period lasts until 1821. The Bank of England issues the first one-pound and two-pound notes (pound notes discontinued March 11, 1988).source
• 1797September 30 – Dominique-Vincent Ramel-Nogaret, French finance minister, repudiates two thirds of France's debt.source
• 1798Nathan Mayer Rothschild moves from Frankfurt in the Holy Roman Empire to England, settling up in business as a textile trader and financier in Manchester.source
• 1799January 9 – British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger introduces an income tax of two shillings to the pound, to raise funds for Great Britain's effort in the French Revolutionary Wars.source
• 1799December 31 – The Dutch East India Company's charter is allowed to expire by the Batavian Republic.source
• 1799The Place Royale in Paris is renamed Place des Vosges, when the Department of Vosges becomes the first to pay new Revolutionary taxes.source
• 1799The small town of Tignish, Prince Edward Island, Canada is founded.source