IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-05669462.html

Une banque d’émission contestée : quelle réforme de la Caisse d’escompte face à la disette monétaire au début de la Révolution française ?

Author

Listed:
  • Louis Pons

    (IDHES - Institutions et Dynamiques Historiques de l'Économie et de la Société - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - UP8 - Université Paris 8 - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - UEVE - Université d'Évry-Val-d'Essonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - ENS Paris Saclay - Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay, UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

Abstract

At the end of the Old Regime, the only issuing bank in Paris, the Caisse d'escompte, was in dire straits and had obtained royal authorization to suspend the convertibility of its banknotes. While its legitimacy as an institution of public credit was questioned in the National Assembly, writings circulating among political clubs, sections and the Paris Commune blamed it for maintaining a monetary shortage that was threatening commerce. Some authors called for the creation of a new issuing bank to increase the quantity of means of payment in circulation. Others demanded that the Caisse convert its banknotes without restrictions, or even that it be liquidated, while some sections hoped the issue of small bills. Ultimately, the Assembly decided not to borrow from the Caisse d'escompte, and the institution gradually lost its local issuing monopoly. However, it remained a crucial intermediary for the State, particularly for the purchase of precious metals abroad.

Suggested Citation

  • Louis Pons, 2026. "Une banque d’émission contestée : quelle réforme de la Caisse d’escompte face à la disette monétaire au début de la Révolution française ?," Post-Print hal-05669462, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05669462
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05669462. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.