The "Mississippi Company" (of 1684) became the "Company of the West" (1717) and expanded as the "Company of the Indies" (1719). This corporation, which held a business monopoly in French colonies in North America and the West Indies, became one of the earliest examples of an economic bubble.
Famous quotes containing the words mississippi and/or company:
““Where is the Mississippi panorama
And the girl who played the piano?
Where are you, Walt?
The Open Road goes to the used-car lot.”
—Louis Simpson (b. 1923)
“We noticed several other sandy tracts in our voyage; and the course of the Merrimack can be traced from the nearest mountain by its yellow sand-banks, though the river itself is for the most part invisible. Lawsuits, as we hear, have in some cases grown out of these causes. Railroads have been made through certain irritable districts, breaking their sod, and so have set the sand to blowing, till it has converted fertile farms into deserts, and the company has had to pay the damages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)