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| Biography: Jean Baptiste Colbert |
The French statesman Jean Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683) was one of the greatest ministers of Louis XIV and is generally regarded as the creator of the economic system of prerevolutionary France.
Jean Baptiste Colbert was born at Reims on Aug. 29, 1619, of a family of prosperous businessmen and officials. He entered the service of the French monarchy under Michel le Tellier, the father of the Marquis de Louvois. In 1651 he became the agent of Cardinal Mazarin, whom he served so well that the cardinal bequeathed him to King Louis XIV in 1661. Almost immediately Colbert became the most important minister in France. He was made intendant of finances in 1661 and in the next few years assumed responsibility for public buildings, commerce, and the administration of the royal household, the navy, and the merchant marine. His only serious rival was the war minister, Louvois. The two men intrigued against each other for royal favor, with Louvois, especially after 1679, gradually winning the upper hand. Colbert, however, remained immensely powerful until his death.
Colbert's most successful years were from 1661 to 1672. The neglect and corruption of the Mazarin period were replaced by a time of prosperity with expanding industry and mounting employment. The tax system was made slightly fairer and much more efficient, thereby greatly increasing Louis XIV's revenues.
In a mercantilist age Colbert was the supreme mercantilist. His program was to build up the economic strength of France by creating and protecting French industries, encouraging exports, and restricting imports (especially of luxury goods). By endless regulation and supervision, he tried to make French industry, particularly in luxury items, first in Europe; he was partially successful, for the French tradition of high quality in certain fields (for example, tapestry and porcelain) dates from his time.
Colbert organized royal trading companies to compete with the English and the Dutch for the trade of the Far East and the Americas. Although these companies were almost all failures, he was successful in building up one of the strongest European navies and a more than respectable merchant marine. At the same time he laid the foundations of the French overseas empire in Canada, the West Indies, and the Far East. The great expansion of French commerce and industry in the next century was largely due to his groundwork.
Colbert carried through a series of legal codifications of enormous importance, and the Code Napoleon was partly inspired by, and based on, his monumental work. He also made himself responsible for the artistic and cultural life of France. He encouraged, patronized, and regimented artists and writers, and the magnificent building program of Louis XIV was primarily his work.
Colbert was not an innovator. His ideas came from other men, particularly Cardinal Richelieu, and his interpretation of them was often mistaken. But for 22 years he controlled the economic fortunes of France, and he did so with an all-embracing scope and an incredible capacity for work. Some of his projects, however, were unsuccessful. He was unable to unify the diverse systems of weights and measures in France or to secure free trade within the country. His regulation of industry by constant inspection was largely ineffective, as his orders were often disregarded.
The major failure of Colbert stemmed from his determination to end Dutch domination of Far Eastern and European trade. Unable to damage the Dutch by a vindictive tariff war, he supported Louis XIV's unprovoked invasion of Holland in 1672 in the hope that the Dutch would be overrun in a few weeks. But the resultant war lasted until 1679, and the strain on the French economy undid many of the good results of Colbert's work.
Colbert died on Sept. 6, 1683, to the great relief of the general public, with whom he was (for the most part undeservedly) very unpopular. The immense concentration of responsibilities in one minister was never repeated under the monarchy.
Further Reading
Most of the work on Colbert is in French. The definitive work in English is Charles Woolsey Cole, Colbert and a Century of French Mercantilism (2 vols., 1939). A useful general treatment is in Pierre Goubert, Louis XIV and Twenty Million Frenchmen (1966; trans. 1970). Goubert considers that Colbert has been overpraised by French historians and stresses his lack of originality and the elementary nature of his views on economics. However, he does justice to the wide range and great importance of Colbert's work.
Additional Sources
Murat, Ines, Colbert, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1984.
Trout, Andrew P., Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1978.
| French Literature Companion: Jean-Baptiste Colbert |
Colbert, Jean-Baptiste (1619-83). Chief minister of Louis XIV from 1661. The son of a merchant, he came to power by engineering Fouquet's downfall, and was responsible for a vigorous and often unpopular programme of economic and administrative reform, protecting French commerce and rebuilding the navy. Seeing the importance of the arts for national prestige, he fostered academies and libraries and elicited royal propaganda by giving pensions to writers selected by Chapelain.
[Peter France]
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Jean Baptiste Colbert |
Bibliography
See E. C. Lodge, Sully, Colbert and Turgot (1931, repr. 1970); C. W. Cole, Colbert and a Century of French Mercantilism (1939).
| History 1450-1789: Jean-Baptiste Colbert |
Colbert, Jean-Baptiste (1619–1683), French statesman. Colbert, the leading minister during the initial decades of Louis XIV's (ruled 1643–1715) personal reign, was born at Reims, the son of a drapery merchant, on 29 August 1619. Exploiting familial ties with Michel le Tellier, Colbert obtained a royal appointment at a relatively young age in 1643. During the chaos of the Fronde (1648–1653), he served as agent for Jules Mazarin's (1602–1661) affairs while the cardinal was exiled from Paris (1651). Colbert's diligence and business acumen resulted in hefty rewards upon Mazarin's return. On his deathbed (1661), the cardinal recommended Colbert to Louis XIV. To secure his position with Louis, Colbert played a notable role in the denouement of Nicolas Fouquet (1615–1680), the powerful albeit corrupt superintendent of finance.
Colbert was a leading proponent of mercantilism. Among other things, this theory postulated a finite amount of wealth determined by the amount of bullion a country controlled; a positive flow of gold and silver could in turn be facilitated by a favorable balance of trade, especially in manufactured goods and overseas products, with the state heavily involved in both directing and encouraging such activities. From 1661 to 1665 Colbert utilized a chambre de justice to correct abuses in the French fiscal system and the collection of royal payments. Several thousand subjects were condemned by this tribunal, and these transgressors were relieved of their ill-gotten windfalls. Colbert also improved the level of crown debt by repudiating some obligations outright and paying off others at a discounted rate. At the same time he sought to increase the king's revenues by revising provisions of the main direct tax, the taille, while increasing indirect taxes. To assist the internal economy, Colbert granted subsidies to select industries. He also oversaw impressive infrastructure improvements involving roads and canals. To help French manufacturers compete against English and Dutch products, Colbert erected protectionist tariffs, particularly in 1667. He sought, generally without success, to abolish the onerous medieval system of internal tolls and tariffs that undermined the competitiveness of French manufactured goods. The so-called Five Great Farms constituted a marginal victory in this campaign. Thanks to these reforms, Louis XIV's revenues probably doubled between 1661 and 1672.
Colbert's mercantilist theories attached pivotal importance to securing a powerful position in European colonial competition in the New World and the Indian Ocean basin. To that end, as secretary of state for the navy (1665), he rebuilt the moribund French fleet from a force of less than a dozen ships to a powerful weapon of about 120 royal ships with thriving shipyards and arsenals at Brest, Toulon, and Rochefort. To accomplish this, he increased yearly expenditures on the navy from about 300,000 livres to nearly 13 million livres. To exploit overseas trade, Colbert also founded a series of state-backed monopoly joint-stock companies, including the East India Company (1664), the West India Company (1664), and the Company for the Levant (1670). Despite problems and competition with the Portuguese, Dutch, and English, these companies managed to entrench a French presence overseas, particularly in North America.
Colbert believed the arts and sciences existed in large part to pay homage to the "Grand Monarchy." He formed the nucleus of the Academy of Royal Architecture (1667) by bringing together Louis Le Vau, Claude Perrault, François Mansart, and François Blondel. In painting he established a French academy in Rome and reorganized the academy of painting and sculpture of Cardinal Richelieu. Colbert also helped establish the Academy of Inscriptions and Medals (1663), the Academy of Sciences (1666), and the Academy of Music (1669). As superintendent for public buildings, he oversaw significant additions to the Louvre as well as the expansion of the palace complex at Versailles.
In these impressive achievements, Colbert demonstrated remarkable energy and industry. He was in fact the perfect bureaucrat for the growing Bourbon state. In public life his personality was indeed cold and dour, conforming to the dictum of Madame de Sévigné, who described him as "the North Star." In private life, however, he revealed a more human side of his character. Colbert's accomplishments were undermined beginning with the Dutch War of 1672, a war he supported since it was directed against his arch commercial and imperial rival, the Dutch. Unfortunately, a glorious start in this war soon gave way to diplomatic and military setbacks. These problems forced Colbert to forsake many of his earlier reforms. Politically the shift to a bellicose foreign policy also witnessed the rise of his rival, the marquis de Louvois (François-Michel Le Tellier; 1639–1691). Created marquis de Seignelay, Colbert died in 1683 an extremely rich man with vast estates, leaving a significant legacy for Louis's reign and France.
Bibliography
Primary Source
Colbert, Jean-Baptiste. Lettres, instructions et mémoires de Colbert. Edited by Pierre Clément. 7 vols. Paris, 1861–1882.
Secondary Sources
Ames, Glenn J. Colbert, Mercantilism, and the French Quest for Asian Trade. De Kalb, Ill., 1996.
Cole, Charles Woosley. Colbert and a Century of French Mercantilism. 2 vols. New York, 1939.
—GLENN J. AMES
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Jean-Baptiste Colbert (29 August 1619 – 6 September 1683) served as the French minister of finance from 1665 to 1683 under the rule of King Louis XIV. He was described by Mme de Sévigné as "Le Nord" (the north), because he was cold and unemotional. His relentless hard work and thrift made him an esteemed minister. He achieved a reputation for his work of improving the state of French manufacturing and bringing the economy back from the brink of bankruptcy. Historians note that, despite Colbert's efforts, France actually became increasingly impoverished because of the King's excessive spending on wars. Colbert worked to create a favourable balance of trade and increase France's colonial holdings. Historians of mercantilism consider Colbert a key figure.
Colbert's market reforms included the foundation of the Manufacture royale de glaces de miroirs in 1665 to supplant the importation of Venetian glass (forbidden in 1672, as soon as French glass manufacture was on a sound basis) and to encourage the technical expertise of Flemish cloth manufacturing in France. He also founded royal tapestry works at Gobelins and supported those at Beauvais. Colbert worked to improve the economy via tariffs and the construction of internal improvements. In regard to foreign markets, Colbert aimed to ensure that the French East India Company could obtain coffee, cotton, dyewoods, fur, pepper, and sugar. In addition, Colbert founded a French merchant marine.
Colbert issued more than 150 edicts to regulate the guilds. One such law had the intention of improving the quality of cloth. The edict declared that if the authorities found a merchant's cloth unsatisfactory on three separate occasions, they were to tie him to a post with the cloth attached to him.
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Colbert's father, Nicolas Colbert, operated as a clothier in his birthplace of Reims, France. He claimed to have Scottish ancestry. A general (but unconfirmed) belief exists that he spent his early youth at a Jesuit college, working for a Parisian banker, as well as working for the father of Jean Chapelain. In 1640, at the age of 21, Colbert had the post of commissaire ordinaire des guerres in the war office; a position generally attributed to the marriage of an uncle to the sister of Secretary of War Le Tellier. Colbert's father Nicolas, however, used his political position and wealth to purchase the title for his son. Colbert's role as commissaire was to inspect troops; this would become an important position and one that would propel him into notoriety in 1648 with the events of the Fronde. In 1648, he married Marie Charron, a daughter of a member of the king's council. Her dowry was 100,000 livres. The marriage contract also mentioned Colbert's 50,000 livres "deriving from his profession"
Colbert was recommended to Louis by Mazarin. While Cardinal Mazarin was in exile, Louis' trust in Colbert grew. In 1652 Colbert was asked to manage the affairs of the Cardinal while he was away. This new responsibility would detach Colbert from his other responsibility as commissaire des guerres. Although Colbert was not a supporter of Mazarin in principle, he would defend the cardinal's interests with unflagging devotion.
Colbert's earliest recorded attempt at tax reform came in the form of a mémoire to Mazarin, showing that of the taxes paid by the people, not one-half reached the King. The paper also contained an attack upon the Superintendent Fouquet. The postmaster of Paris, a spy of Fouquet's, read the letter, leading to a dispute which Mazarin attempted to suppress.
In 1661, Mazarin died and Colbert "made sure of the King's favour" by revealing the location of some of Mazarin's hidden wealth. In January 1664 Colbert became the Superintendent of buildings; in 1665 he became Controller-General of Finances; in 1669, he became Secretary of State of the Navy; he also gained appointments as minister of commerce, of the colonies and of the palace. In short, Colbert acquired power in every department except that of war.
A great financial and fiscal reform at once claimed all his energies. Not only the nobility, but many others who had no legal claim to exemption, paid no taxes; the bulk of the burden fell on the wretched country-folk. Supported by the young king Louis XIV, Colbert aimed the first blow at the man accused of being the greatest of the royal embezzlers, the superintendent Nicolas Fouquet. Fouquet's fall, it should be noted, simultaneously secured Colbert's own advancement.
With the abolition of the office of superintendent and of many other offices dependent upon it, the supreme control of the finances became vested in a royal council. The sovereign functioned as its president; but Colbert, though for four years he only possessed the title of intendant, operated as its ruling spirit, having had great personal authority conferred upon him by the king. One must not judge the career on which Colbert now entered without remembering the corruption of the previous financial administration. His ruthlessness in this case, dangerous precedent as it gave, seemed perhaps necessary; the council could not respect individual interests. When he had severely punished guilty officials, he turned his attention to the fraudulent creditors of the government. Colbert had a simple method of operation. He repudiated some of the public loans, and cut off from others a percentage, which varied, at first according to his own decision, and afterwards according to that of the council which he established to examine all claims against the state.
Much more serious difficulties met his attempts to introduce equality in the pressure of the taxes on the various classes. To diminish the number of the privileged proved impossible, but Colbert firmly resisted false claims for exemption, and lightened the unjust direct taxation by increasing the indirect taxes, from which the privileged could not escape. At the same time he immensely improved the mode of collection.
Having thus introduced a measure of order and economy into the workings of the government, Colbert now called for the enrichment of the country by commerce. The state, through Colbert's dirigiste policies, fostered manufacturing enterprises in a wide variety of fields. The authorities established new industries, protected inventors, invited in workmen from foreign countries, and prohibited French workmen from emigrating. To maintain the character of French goods in foreign markets, as well as to afford a guarantee to the home consumer, Colbert had the quality and measure of each article fixed by law, punishing breaches of the regulations by public exposure of the delinquent and by destruction of the goods concerned, and, on the third offense, by the pillory. But whatever advantage resulted from this rule, the disadvantages it entailed more than outweighed them. Colbert prohibited the production of qualities which would have suited many purposes of consumption, and the odious supervision which became necessary involved great waste of time and a stereotyped regularity which resisted all improvements. Other parts of Colbert's schemes have met with less equivocal condemnation.
By his firm maintenance of the corporation system, each industry remained in the hands of certain privileged bourgeois; in this way, too, the system greatly discouraged improvement; while the lower classes found opportunities of advancement closed. With regard to international commerce Colbert suffered equally from lack of foresight: the tariffs he devised protected commerce to an extreme, and under his tutelage enforcement of trade and quality restrictions was draconian, to the point that his technocrats put to death 16,000 small entrepreneurs whose only crime was importing or manufacturing cotton cloth in violation of French law. [1] He did, however, wisely consult the interests of internal commerce. Unable to abolish the duties on the passage of goods from province to province, he did what he could to induce the provinces to equalise them. Currency exchange rates still remained between these provinces despite a policy focusing on the unification of French trade. His régime improved roads and canals. Pierre Paul Riquet (1604–1680) planned and constructed the Canal du Midi under Colbert's patronage. To encourage overseas trade with the Levant, Senegal, Guinea and other places, Colbert granted privileges to companies, but, like the noted French East India Company, all proved unsuccessful. The narrowness and rigidity of the government regulations significantly contributed to this collapse, as well as the failure of the colonies, upon which Colbert had bestowed a great deal of energy and political capital.
Even ecclesiastical affairs, though with these he had no official concern, did not altogether escape Colbert's attention. He took a subordinate part in the struggle between the king and the papacy as to the royal rights over vacant bishoprics; and he seems to have sympathised with the proposal that suggested seizing part of the wealth of the clergy. In his hatred of idleness he ventured to suppress no less than seventeen fêtes, and he had a project for lessening the number of persons devoted to clerical and monastic life, by fixing the age for taking the vows some years later than the then customary time. He showed himself at first unwilling to interfere with heresy, for he realised the commercial value of the Huguenots (French Protestants), who were well represented among the merchant classes; but when the king resolved to make all France Roman Catholic, he followed him and urged his subordinates to do all that they could to promote conversions.
In art and literature Colbert took much interest. He possessed a remarkably fine private library, which he delighted to fill with valuable manuscripts from every part of Europe where France had placed a consul. He has the honour of having founded the Academy of Sciences (now part of the Institut de France), the Paris Observatory, which he employed Claude Perrault to build and brought Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625–1712) from Italy to superintend, the Academies of Inscriptions and Medals, of Architecture and of Music, the French Academy at Rome, and Academies at Arles, Soissons, Nimes and many other towns. He reorganised the Academy of Painting and Sculpture which Mazarin had established. He himself became a member of the Académie française; and proposed one very characteristic rule with the intention of expediting the great Dictionary, in which he had a great interest: no one could count as present at any meeting unless he arrived before the hour of commencement and remained till the hour for leaving. In 1673 Colbert presided over the first exhibition of the works of living painters; and he enriched the Louvre with hundreds of pictures and statues. He gave many pensions to men of letters, among whom we find Molière, Corneille, Racine, Boileau, P D Huet (1630–1721) and Antoine Varillas (1626–1696); and even foreigners, as Huygens, Carlo Dati the Dellacruscan. Evidence exists to show that by this munificence he hoped to draw out praises of his sovereign and himself; but this motive certainly does not account for all the splendid, if in some cases specious, services that he rendered to literature, science and art.
Colbert worked incessantly hard until his final hours. Working was his religion; he once pondered whether it was better to rise early and work or sleep very late and work. He concluded that rising early and sleeping late would be the ideal combination. However at the age of 68 he suffered from stomach aches which caused him much distress. He was reduced to eating moist bread dipped in chicken broth for his meals. By 69 he was bedridden and 4 days after his birthday he died. The surgeons that operated on him found that he was suffering from kidney stones. A huge stone was found in his urinary tract, which would explain why he was in such writhing agony.
In 1657, he purchased the Barony of Seignelay.
Of his children, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Marquis de Seignelay followed his father as Secretary of State of the Navy while Jacques-Nicolas Colbert was Archbishop of Rouen.
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| Preceded by Jean de Silhon |
Seat 24
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Succeeded by Jean de la Fontaine |
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