Customer Reviews

The Secret History of the South Sea Bubble: The World's First Great Financial Scandal

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Balen's account of the "South Sea Bubble" is an entertaining account rather than an exhaustive historical examination of the events surrounding the South Sea Companies rise and fall in the early 18th century. This is not to say that the book lacks historical analysis and insight - but it does not qualify for the sobriquet of a "learned" text.

After a few opening pages of purple prose (through which the reader should plough through, for there is better to come) Balen sets out to paint the circumstances surrounding the "South Sea Bubble". He composes a good picture of the fevered speculation of the period, and in particular is very strong in drawing the parallels to the French experiment with paper money under Law. The view of England being drawn into a speculative frenzy in part because of the need to beat France in commerce is a neat interpretation - and Balen's researches amongst the diplomatic archives bolster the view that the bubble grew out of competition with France.

A reader familiar with analysis of the period will come across the usual clichés - the company formed for "an undertaking of Great Advantage but no-one to know what it is" makes its obligatory appearance, for instance. Alongside these crowd-pleasers, Balen also offers some interesting details of the rise of the company, and the politics surrounding it. In so short a volume, the background setting is necessarily fairly cursory. Nevertheless, the political intrigue (with Walpole cast as the Machiavelli of his day) is well written.

Overall, this text serves as an excellent, entertaining introduction to the bubble. It provides some nice analysis of the bubble in an international context. Heading each chapter is a quote from an apposite article on the internet bubble - but without further elaboration - which struck me as a nice if none too subtle commentary on the ability of human nature to forget bitter experience in the face of wanton greed. For a really serious historian of the period, there is little to be gained from this work, perhaps - but for a generalist, it serves its purpose admirably and gives an nice overview of the phenomena.

This should be compulsory reading for all students and politicians.

It explains how we are in the mess we are in right now and the probable outcome. This was Victoria, Australia in the 1980's and what's quaintly called the GFC now.

The real problem is we are only told the truth eventually and there is seldom any punishment meted out for all the misdeeds.

This is an eminently readable book telling the story of the first of the Stock Market frauds, manipulation and subsequent crash in the clear prose of a thoroughly professional communicator. The author has worked in all media and is a News Head with the BBC (British Broadcasting Service) of Great Britain.
Following a scenario now ruefully and regrettably so familiar to those of us who survived the dot.com and Second Great Recession crashes, this history of the 1710-20 rip-off by Banks, Bonders and bounders is all too readily understood. The `Bubble' was what we have been painfully taught to call a "trading margin', the 'South Sea' was a non-existing market "demand" and the trading was as free and unregulated as a Ponzi scheme.
Balen's earlier historical book was on Waterloo ... and investors in this `opportunity' met theirs.
Charles Dickens had words of wisdom for us on short-sales, stocks, lottery, bond and fraud, if we had only seen them - "Sufficient answer to all; Shares. O mighty Shares!... 'Relieve us of our money, scatter it for us, buy us and sell us, ruin us, only we beseech ye take rank among the powers of the earth, and fatten on us'!"

This book just moves slowly from one topic to another with no clear reason of where its going. I found it shallow on facts for the length of the book. Its like a magazine article was teased and pulled into a book.