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Battlefield: Decisive Conflicts in History

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This was required reading for a graduate course in the history of the French Revolution. Jacques Necker was born in Geneva Switzerland in 1732, he died there in1804. His father Charles, a lawyer by training, was born in the Brandenburg province in Prussia; however, he accepted a chair to teach law at the Genevan academy. Charles married Jeanne-Marie Gautier, a daughter of an important Geneva family which helped Charles move up the ladder of Genevan society. Jacques Necker was a bright boy who had a keen interest in literature. Charles steered Jacques, his second son into pursuing a career in commerce. Jacques was sent by his father to Paris to work in the banking firm of Isaac Vernet, the brother of a friend. Jacques quickly proved his abilities and found himself assuming the duties of his employer in his absence. The childless Vernet retired in 1756 and turned the reins of the firm over to the 23-year-old Necker. Necker partnered with George-Tobie de Thellusson and formed Thellusson and Necker, with Jacques managing the daily operation of the bank. Both men retired from active participation in the bank in 1772 turning it over to Necker's son Louis and Thellusson's brother-in-law. When Necker accepted his post to the royal treasury in 1776, he publicly declared his worth at 3 million livres. The bank made its profits on grain speculations and short-term loans to the French government.


Necker's first foray into government finance and politics came when he was appointed as a syndic, a specialist in commerce and finance representing the stockholders interests of The French Company of the Indies in 1763 for two years. The company owned exclusive rights for trade in the French colonies of East Asia and received official government military protection of its trade posts as well. In return, the French government insisted on appointing the managers of the company. The stockholders who were primarily interested in profits were chaffed by the way the royal appointees ran the company as typical government bureaucrats, with little regard for efficiency or profit. At the end of the Seven Years War, the company lost over 100 million livres, which moved them to look for reform-minded men to suggest ideas to save it from ruin. Necker's penchant for reforming the company telegraph's his economic philosophy that he later brought to the old regime as finance minister. He was a champion of continuing the company's exclusive trade concession this pleased the mercantilist stockholders. However, he also abhorred the inefficient government control of the company this displeased the physiocrats in the company. Thus, Necker's reforms were blocked by both factions, Necker believed that had his reforms been adopted the company would not have been liquidated in 1770. Although Necker failed to persuade the right officials to save the company, his astute reforms made him well known in the public eye, with the help of his wife, his ambition for economic reforms grew.


His fame in the Republic of Geneva grew to the extent that the government appointed him its minister to Versailles in 1768. Although Necker was a Protestant, this new appointment aided his meteoric rise to power in France since it brought him in close contact with a wide circle of influential members of court including the ministers of the royal counsel. In addition, his ease of moving in these rarified circles was due in large part to his marriage. In 1764, Necker was smitten by a Swiss traveling companion of a French widow whom he had previously been in love with. Suzanne Curchod, had been engaged to Edward Gibbon but married Necker after a brief courtship. It cannot be overstated that Suzanne proved to be a very crucial and influential figure in Necker's life and government career. Soon after marriage, Suzanne, the daughter of a Calvinist pastor, started her salon which met with great success in just a few short years. There is a controversy among historians as to whether Suzanne initiated he salon to further he husbands career or if she did it out of her interest in literature and philosophy which she developed during he life in Laussane. In either event, her salon became the place to be on Friday evenings. The Necker's had a vey happy marriage and in 1766, there only child, Anne Louise Germaine Necker, was born, she later became a famous author under the name of Madame de Staël; she hosted a well attended salon as well.

Most contemporary commentators described Necker as possessing two characteristics, ambition and pride. Necker certainly had a high regard for his own abilities. Robert D. Harris, in Necker Reform Statesman of the Ancien Régime after studying several sources wrote that, "The ambition of Necker, however great it may have seemed to observers of that time and since, was intimately bound up with his goals as a reform statesman." In addition, Harris did not find evidence of Necker being a prideful man. "He was remarkably lacking in rancor. His enemies could wound him, but they could not arouse in him a ferocious will to crush them, or to seek vengeance." Necker was a prodigious writer on economic topics and fiscal government policy. His reform theories brought him much attention in economic circles and one of his works won a prestigious prize of the Académie Française in 1773. Franco Venturi in The End of the Old Regime in Europe, 1776-1789 found that Necker was much enamored with the English economic reform model, and "...for the political and social constitution of England." Necker recognized that through England's mode of government and its higher wages for its citizens they could more fully enjoy what the enlightenment had to offer over their counterparts in France. Thus, this admiration of England's reforms became the basis of Necker's own reform model for France.

Simon Schama in Citizens a Chronicle of the French Revolution wrote of the euphoric outpouring that Necker received when in 1776, he was given the opportunity to put his reforms in action. Louis XVI appointed Necker Director-General of Finance a newly created post for this Protestant foreigner. Schama found that there is little evidence to show why Louis XVI selected Necker for his post; however, "Public opinion saw Necker as a banking wizard: someone who could pull rabbits out of hats and money out of thin air." Venturi noted that Necker's reputation was at its zenith on the day of his appointment from a quotation from a letter the philosophe Diderot wrote. "Necker has enlightened views, justice, firmness, high-mindedness, and I hope, like all honest people, for the long life of his administration." Necker would soon disappoint "radical enlightened" philosophes like Diderot because he decided that steady reform much like he admired in England was the best model for France. Necker eventually disappointed so many because he was neither a "free trader" nor a believer in a "command economy." Harris found his governing style was that of a pragmatic compromiser with liberal tendencies. "As much as possible the individual and the society should be free of government interference. But where circumstances require intervention the government should be prepared to intervene."

Soon after Necker's appointment, the French government officially supported the American Revolutionary cause against England. Necker recognized that this support would become a financial burden on France's already straining economy. To pay for war expenditures he advocated the government action of increasing loans instead of raising taxes on the already tax strapped Third Estate. He believed that by cutting government bureaucratic spending the French government could cover the loans. Unfortunately, Necker also realized that much of his "liberal" economic reforms and tax relief plans for the Third Estate would have to be put on hold until the war was over. However, during the war years Necker was writing a prodigious amount of reform plans that he was anxious to enact as soon as the war was over.

Venturi noted that, "In February 1781 Necker made the most important gesture of his first ministry." He summarized his reform plans in his most important publication, the Compte rendu du roi, "report of the king." Schama opined, "Establishing some sort of accountability in French government was, for Necker, the heart of the matter." Harris found that Compte rendu served several functions. For the very first time, this annual report was published in the new "public sphere" for all Frenchmen to see. The reforms, which drew great notice from the public, included such topics as reducing the king's annual household budget from 40 to 20 million livres and reducing the pensions, he granted. Necker also had plans to reform the tax system so that the burden would be eased on the Third Estate. Venturi noted that, "All parts of Europe resounded with echoes of the Compte rendu in the spring of 1781." However, the publication of the Compte rendu would ultimately be Necker's political demise. The economist and former government minister, Turgot became one of Necker's most vociferous public critics. The "Genevan banker" was attacked for being a republican and not supporting the monarchy. Venturi recognized that one of the harshest attacks against Necker was that, "It was wrong and dangerous to try to make economic problems the center of French policy, when everything should be subordinated to the needs of the war and victory."

A confluence of events caused Louis XVI to accept Necker's resignation three months after the publication of the Compte rendu. Harris recognized that each time Necker made budgetary cuts in the several departments of the central government, and the royal household, the more enemies he made in court including "...members of the royal family, princes of the blood, and peers of the realm." Necker's critics insisted that his method of financing the war by relying on loans and refusing to raise taxes was a catastrophe for the French economy by 1781. Harris had conducted extensive research to prove that many of Necker's contemporary detractors, as well as some future historians were incorrect in their reading of the various revenue streams and expenses which led them to believe there was a deficit of over 218 million livres. Finally, the last nail in Necker's political coffin was the publication of a document Necker sent the king that was unflattering to France's magistrates and intendants and was "grotesquely distorted" by his enemies--his resignation caused dismay among Parisians.

In retirement, Necker once again turned to writing economic treatises and defending his ministry. In Harris' second book Necker and the Revolution of 1789 he delineated Necker's second and third ministries. When his successors' could not keep France from economic ruin he was recalled by Louis XVI in 1788, as Director-General and Minister of State to save the old regime. Understanding the nation was on the precipice of revolution he tried to hold the old regime together in the Estates-General in 1789 and argued for the doubling of the Third Estate. However, his 110-page speech to the Estates-General and his tepid plan for reform led to his dismissal once again. Parisians were in uproar once again at his dismissal and he was recalled a third time to his ministry. However, he continued to prove to be a poor diplomat his reform plans were ignored among members of the finance committee in the National Assembly. Thus, Necker was unable to pull any more rabbits out of his hat to save France from economic turmoil and he was dismissed in 1790, this time his reputation was shattered and all were happy to see him go. He lived out his days in a chateau near Geneva; he occupied himself with writing until he died in 1804.

Harris noted that many French historians of the nineteenth and twentieth century have not looked kindly on Necker's talents or motives, he was seen "as a mediocrity at best, a charlatan at worst." In his book The Coming of the French Revolution Georges Lefebvre wrote that "He had no comprehensive views of the work to be accomplished, and, if he had had, he was scarcely in a position to put them into effect--a point often overlooked by those who have condemned him." There is quite a lot of history in French, which this reader is unable to survey. Harris has written two volumes in English on Necker and is working on a third. Venturi's chapter on Necker like Harris and Schama's assessments was more balanced then past historians have been. Harris ended his first volume with this sentence, "The rehabilitation of the Genevan banker is long overdue."

Recommended reading for anyone interested in political philosophy, enlightenment history, and the French Revolution.