What is the oldest war for which a country is still paying reparations, or what are the oldest bonds still in existence?
I heard that a while back the UK government was still paying out bonds from the Napoleonic wars.
Alternatively, what are the oldest stocks in existence? Like for the East India Conpany or something.
The British Consols (war bonds) of the Napoleonic War are still being paid, but there are even older Treasury Gilts from the South Sea Bubble in 1720. As noted by Piketty, the UK has never defaulted on any debt - unlike most other nations. The very oldest active bonds, however, were issued in 1624 by the Hoogheemraadschap Lekdijk Bovendams, a Dutch water board responsible for upkeep of local dykes, and verified to be still paying annuitites in 2003 (Berk, DeMarzo, et al, "Fundamentals of Corporate Finance", 2014).
Edit: as noted in this thread, Britain has defaulted on WW1 bonds in 1932. I'm not sure why Piketty disregards it in "Capital ..."
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Follow up question - were land purchases like the Alaska purchase and the Louisiana purchase paid off as one time payments or over a period of time? Were they permanent deals or loan agreements? I have seen theories about Alaska being a 99 year loan, but not sure if there is any credible evidence of this or if this is a myth
Stora Kopparberg, now part of Finnish Stora Enso, regarded themselves as the oldest limited liability company. There is a 1288 stock certificate of Stora Kopparberg by bishop of Västerås. However, there was no public trading. As you speculated, VOC was the first publicly traded stock as far as I know.
Surprised no one's mentioned Haiti. AFAIK it's the only time in modern history where a nation successful won it's independence from the mother country, and then been successful forced to pay back the "debt" of achieving it's freedom from said country by the international community. iirc Haiti's debt to France is actually still being payed off.
There was a discussion about the oldest US and UK bonds in this very subreddit a few months ago: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2repza/britain_just_refinanced_debt_from_1720_what_is/
Charles Dickens in American Notes refers to the USA and ,I think, something called Repudiation, which I always took to refer to a default of some kind. Any one know what he meant?