The Logistical Geography of French Remitting

International exchange and remitting in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was not so much a matter of country-to-country transfers and currency swaps as deals between people in different cities and towns. Remittances could be inland, that is, involve the transfer of funds by bill of exchange from one city to another within the same currency zone; or be international, between two cities in different currency zones. This was a reflection of how the exchange system had developed around bulk trading, luxury goods trading and wholesale merchant activity, all of which were centred overwhelmingly in the bigger towns and cities of Europe. Nevertheless, while big traders functioned mainly in urban locations, armies abroad campaigned over larger territories, and their sovereign commanders needed to send money from home cities to a changing variety of urban centres in multiple theatres of conflict. This chapter will therefore lay out the key locations for French war-related remitting, the nodal points in and outside France from which further onward financing of the armies could occur. It will then look more closely at the ‘remittance corridors’ (to use the modern expression) down which French money travelled, and identify some of the most important individuals based in other countries for providing money for Louis XIV’s military machine. What is remarkable is the use of urban centres across not only western and southern Europe, but also further afield in the east.