Abstract
Between 1758 and 1836, a state-run lottery operated continuously in France (except for a four-year period in 1793–1797 during the Revolution) with monthly drawings from 1759. Over the course of its history, surviving several regime changes, the lottery underwent several name changes, so for simplicity in his highly engaging and accessible account, Stephen Stigler refers to it simply as the Loterie. Despite the highly volatile period of its existence, the form and operations of the Loterie remained essentially consistent from its first drawing in April 1758. This alone makes it worthy of note. However, what made the Loterie truly remarkable, as Stigler notes, is that the French government (monarchical, republican, or imperial) assumed an unprecedented and never again attempted risk in running the game: ‘At each drawing, the state was at risk of losing a large amount; what is more, that risk was precisely calculable, generally well understood, and yet taken on by the state with little more than a mathematical theory to protect it’ (1). This potentially fatal financial risk was central to the Loterie's appeal and is the reason Stigler argues that ownership of the lottery be assigned to Giacomo Casanova.
In Stigler's telling, Casanova possessed the unique combination of charm, courtliness, intelligence and sheer bravado necessary to convince the French crown to adopt this risky format in the first place. The Venetian did not invent the form of the Loterie, nor was he the first to present it to the French government, but he was instrumental in its adoption and in advocating that the real risk to the royal finances should not be limited. The protection for the crown lay in what is now known as the law of large numbers, which explains how the average long-term results for random events can be anticipated. The initial edict creating the Loterie did, despite Casanova's objections, include limits on bets to manage the risk. Stigler observes, however, that these do not ever actually appear to have been invoked and that they disappeared from future iterations. The governors of France, throughout the operation of the Loterie, came to accept the law of large numbers as a prophylactic against financial devastation, although Stigler notes, ‘their comfort surely came more from experience than from mathematical proof’ (198).
The first iteration of the Loterie existed to fund the École militaire. In June 1776, this dedicated purpose was changed and the Loterie was re-created as a source of general funds for the French government. At that point, the Loterie was returning an average annual net profit of two million francs. At its peak, in 1801 the net profit exceeded twenty-four million francs (around 4 per cent of the government's income). By the time of its suppression, on 1 January 1836, the fiscal value of the Loterie had declined and the strength of the French economy contributed to its eventual demise.
Stigler is not a historian by training, but a statistician. As such, Casanova's Lottery does not present a historical analysis or interpretation. For example, Stigler makes no connection between the transformation of the Loterie in 1776 and French financial support for the American revolutionaries. Nor does he situate the book in conversation with the rich scholarship on the history of gambling. The book instead offers a straightforward chronological, descriptive narrative of the Loterie's existence, drawing on the wealth of printed materials available. At several points, I am sure that archival research would have filled some of the gaps and elisions that such sources cannot cover, such as the arguments that initially overcame Casanova's objection to any limitation of the crown's risk or the reasons for the 1776 transformation.
Casanova's Lottery really comes into its own between Chapters 10 to 13, in which Stigler's statistical expertise enables him to undertake an analysis beyond the skill of many (maybe most) historians. The detailed analysis that Stigler presents at this point relies particularly on Menut de Saint Mesmin's Almanach Romain sur la loterie de France, published in 1834. This book – intended as a guide for would-be bettors – published all the winning numbers drawn since 1758 as well as the prizes paid out, along with other details. This incredible database, covering almost the entire existence of the Loterie, constitutes, Stigler argues, ‘a precisely randomized survey of the French betting public’ in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, ‘more than a century before randomized surveys were invented’ (6). Using Menut's data and other sources, Stigler assesses the fairness of the Loterie, the behaviour of gamblers and a host of other details about the operations of the game.
Casanova's Lottery will be of interest to historians of gambling, finance, and probability, not least for the clearly explained statistical analyses. Moreover, Stigler's lucid and elegant prose makes the book an engaging read for a wide audience.