Cavendish Affair
| Date | 17 June 1944 – 6 August 1945 (232 days) |
|---|---|
| Type | Political conspiracy |
| Target | |
| Participants | Individuals Institutions State actors |
| Outcome |
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The Cavendish Affair (17 June 1944 – 6 August 1945; French: affaire Cavendish, Genoese: Prêuva da Banchê, Yiddish: שאַנדע פֿון די בענק) was a major international political conspiracy and attempted coup d'état spanning fourteen months. With financial and political motives, numerous powerful individuals across Europe and North America collaborated with the banks of Great Britain, Saint George, and Providence to restore the Grimaldi dynasty to power in the Fourth Republic of France. The incident would have major political, social, and economic implications for the remainder of the 20th century and beyond.
Over the first period of the scandal, senior officers of three prominent Euro–American banks, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom William Cavendish, former royal prince Catalan G. Grimaldi, and Genoese financier Pippo Profumo were identified as the main proponents of a multinational bribery and insider trading scheme. Later, the Quebecois Count of Soissons and Papal bishop Teodoro de Almeida were implicated as supporters of the plot, though they did not receive any legal backlash. Isabelle Milhaude, a diplomatic aide to the British state, was then discovered to be a Russian national republican asset on the twenty-eighth of December.
February saw the Kingdom of Portugal bring charges against Catalan G. Grimaldi for the murder of Guillame Fayette, a close associate of his and presumed informant, in the Madeira islands. Under increasing pressure from the British public, Prime Minister Cavendish resigned in disgrace on 17 July and subsequently faced criminal prosecution and financial sanctions from the Crown. Profumo and Milhaude soon followed, facing much harsher sentences, drawing criticism from the press. From 2–6 August, Grimaldi's trial resulted in his highly publicized conviction and the conclusion of the Cavendish Affair.
The Affair had both immediate and long-term global complications. Electorally, it led to the near-instant appointment of opposition leader Gordon Howell as the British head of government and is said to have had a major positive impact on the success of national republican candidate Jean-Jacques Caillat in the 1949 French elections. Increasing anti-Genoese sentiment led to an irreversible dip in the Republic's economic fitness and international reputation; this also coincided with a spike in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories regarding the newly established ethnostate of Galicia as well as prominent Jewish dynasties.
For the foreseeable future, the Association of North American Nations decisively adopted an anti-Atlanticist stance, furthering alienating their European allies and New France, despite the latter's own efforts to distance themselves from the European establishment by voiding their claims on the continental French throne and asserting themselves a purely American state in 1947. The Leiden school of economics also gained global prominence — an economic ideology deeply skeptical of financial institutions and the liberal status quo, it perfectly suited the general public mind in the aftermath of the Affair.
Since the late 1940s, the Cavendish Affair has featured heavily in popular culture and political discourse, often being the subject or primary inspiration of numerous pieces of media, both comedic and serious in nature. It has also been weaponized in order to push specific political agendas, most notably those of the late 20th-century leaders Fulgence Morel and John Herman Vann.
