Debt: The First 5,000 Years

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• France invades Madagascar whole source

  In 1895, for example, France invaded Madagascar, disbanded the government of then–Queen Ranavalona III, and declared the country a French co…

• Iraq's invasion of Kuwait whole source

  Iraq is still paying Kuwait for Saddam Hussein’s invasion in 1990.

• Malagasy revolt of 1947 whole source

  the French army and police slaughtered quite a number of Malagasy who objected too strongly to the arrangement (a hundred thousand, by some…

• Onset of the 2008 financial crisis whole source

  September 2008 saw the beginning of a financial crisis that almost brought the world economy screeching to a halt.

• United States adopts a bankruptcy law whole source

  in 1787, the Constitution specifically charged the new government with creating one, all attempts were rejected, or quickly reversed, on “mo…

• Adam Smith founds economics with The Wealth of Nations whole source

  It was by telling it, in the significant year of 1776, that Adam Smith, professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow, effectiv…

• Aristotle theorizes the origin of money whole source

  Already in 330 BC, Aristotle was speculating along vaguely similar lines in his treatise on politics.

• Sumerian temple accountancy system whole source

  by the time the curtain goes up on Mesopotamian civilization around 3500 BC, temple administrators already appear to have developed a single…

• Founding of the Bank of England whole source

  In 1694, a consortium of English bankers made a loan of £1,200,000 to the king. In return they received a royal monopoly on the issuance of…

• Gallieni imposes a head tax in Madagascar whole source

  one of the first things that the French general Gallieni, conqueror of Madagascar, did when the conquest of the island was complete in 1901…

• Panic of 1893 whole source

  The Bryan campaigns were born as a reaction to the Panic of 1893.

• Greenbackers stage the first March on Washington whole source

  In 1894, the Greenbackers, who pushed for detaching the dollar from gold entirely to allow the government to spend freely on job-creation ca…

• Nixon ends the gold standard whole source

  Richard Nixon’s decision in 1971 to unpeg the dollar from precious metals entirely, eliminate the international gold standard, and introduce…

• Rise of Mesopotamian palace complexes whole source

  By at least 2700 BC, ambitious rulers had begun to imitate them by creating palace complexes organized on similar terms

• Debt loans and peonage common in Sumer whole source

  By c. 2400 BC it already appears to have been common practice on the part of local officials, or wealthy merchants, to advance loans to peas…

• Nehemiah appointed governor of Judaea whole source

  In 444 BC, he managed to talk the Great King into appointing him governor of his native Judaea.

• Nehemiah reissues the Law of Jubilee whole source

  The most famous of these is the Law of Jubilee: a law that stipulated that all debts would be automatically canceled “in the Sabbath year” (…

• Bank of England abandons tally-stick accounting whole source

  the Bank of England still kept their own internal accounts using tally sticks in Adam Smith’s time, and only abandoned the practice in 1826.

• Abolition of debt bondage in Rome whole source

  The Roman historian Livy’s account of the abolition of debt bondage in Rome in 326 BC, for instance, featured a handsome young man named Cai…

• Solon's reforms in Athens whole source

  He is referring to the great crisis leading to Solon’s reforms, the famous “shaking off of burdens” of c. 594 BC.

• Plato sold into slavery near Aegina whole source

  The Republic was written in 380 BC, and these events took place in 388/7.

• Roman law bans non-citizens selling kin into slavery whole source

  Livy (41.9.11) notes in 177 BC the senate actually passed a law to prevent Italians who were not Roman citizens from selling relatives into…

• Mass slave escape from the Athenian mines whole source

  Thucydides (6.97.7) claimed that 20,000 escaped from the mines in 421 BC

• Yellow Turban rebellion in China whole source

  the favorite philosophy for peasant rebels for many centuries to come, starting with the Yellow Turbans of 184 AD.

• Abbasid 'inquisition' over the ulema whole source

  the “inquisition” of 832, the failed Abbasid attempt to take control of the ulema

• Paper money experiment fails in Basra whole source

  An experiment with Chinese-style paper money in Basra in 1294 failed, as no one was willing to accept money backed only by state trust

• Expulsion of the Jews from England whole source

  who received the property of the English Jews when the latter were finally expelled in 1290.

• First debtors' prisons in England whole source

  Debtor’s prisons, in the sense of prisons exclusively for debtors, existed in England only after 1263

• Ye Zongliu's miners' uprising in Ming China whole source

  Between 1445 and 1449 these became a serious threat as silver miners under a rebel leader named Ye Zongliu made common cause with tenant far…

• Britain's first bankruptcy law whole source

  Britain passed its first bankruptcy law in 1542.

• Fleet and Marshalsea debtors' prison scandal whole source

  The horrors of the Fleet and Marshalsea were laid bare in 1729.

• US ends dollar convertibility to gold for citizens whole source

  U.S. citizens had not been able to cash in dollars for gold since 1934.

• US strikes down federal usury laws whole source

  The key legislation was the “Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act” of 1980, which struck down all federal usury law…