Maitland, Alexander, d. 1907

The South Sea Company was formed circa 1711 by the British government with a monopoly on trade in South America in exchange for liquidating the British national debt by selling shares in its trading enterprises and funding payment of the debt from a part of the company's capital stock. In 1721 the inflated value of the company's shares collapsed which brought on the fall of the British government and widespread financial and political ruin. The Mississippi Scheme was a rival project in France devised by the Scottish economist John Law.