AN ALARMING COMMERCIAL CRISIS IN 18TH-CENTURY ANGOULEME - SENTIMENTS IN ECONOMIC-HISTORY

A serious crisis developed in the French provincial town of Angouleme in 1769, set off by the accusation against several creditors or 'capit alists' of having charged usurious rates of interest. The episode insp ired an important work by Turgot on risk, uncertainty, and financial d eregulation. The article looks both at Turgot's arguments and at the e vents of the Angouleme crisis. It suggests thar the micro-history of c hange in economic ideas and in economic and legal institutions may ill uminate the commercial transformations of the eighteenth century, as w ell as political events in France at the time of Tocqueville's 'first French Revolution'.