For many Americans, the journey of the Mayflower symbolizes the birth of their nation. To this day, the Pilgrim Fathers are a glorified symbol of American virtue.  In search of autonomy and with the desire to preserve their cultural identity, a group of English Puritans left their Dutch refuge in 1620 to set off for the New World. That voyage is not just a tale of a religious community bravely going their own way; the events of those days would have a major impact on the course of modern history.  The rules and regulations of the Mayflower Compact that the Pilgrim Fathers, religious sectarians, abided by, became the secular prototype for the constitution of the United States of America; a social contract that would serve as an example for many other national constitutions during the European age of civil society and thereafter.

Journey Into the Unknown: William Bradford And The Pilgrim Fathers

The Scot John Law is a mathematical genius, able to calculate at lightning speed, specialized in probabilities. In the salons of London he makes a small fortune with his skills, in Amsterdam he studies the local financial system and comes into contact with the idea of "artificial money", supported by gold coins. He soon has the "Banque Royale" founded, in which banknotes are getting printed, in order to get the catastrophic financial situation in France back under control. The country is practically debt free overnight and Law becomes chief financial administrator. The invention of stocks is the next step, but it turns out to be a gigantic speculative bubble. The documentation tells this story.