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Echoes of 1721

Emma Duncan: Britain editor, The Economist

Omens from the aftermath of an earlier disaster

Picking up the pieces after a disaster can make your career

IT WAS THE year of clearing up, after the bursting of the South Sea Bubble in 1720.
Thousands had been ruined by speculation in the shares of a company granted a
monopoly in trading slaves to the South Seas. A committee of inquiry—of the sort that
will look into Britain’s mismanagement of covid- 19 —reported on the disaster in 1721
and found that big cheeses in government, who had taken free shares from the South
Sea Company and helped inflate its share price, were culpable. Many were sacked. The
chancellor of the exchequer was imprisoned.

Sir Robert Walpole, who had kept his nose clean, sorted out the mess. He stripped the
company’s beneficiaries of most of their wealth and handed over the money to the
victims, though he protected the king and his mistresses. He thus assuaged public fury,
stayed on the right side of the monarch and made his reputation, becoming the first
British prime minister. (The title was not used at the time, but was instead an insult
used to describe a courtier who had accrued too much influence at court.) Walpole held