Etienne de Silhouette

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Étienne de Silhouette (born July 5, 1709 in Limoges , † January 20, 1767 in Bry-sur-Marne ) was French general controller of finances, contrôleur général des finances under Louis XV. He held this administrative function from March 4 to November 21, 1759.

Live and act

His father Arnaud de Silhouette came from Biarritz and had Basque origins. De Silhouette made a cavalier tour to London, among other places, where he studied the British economy and the British financial system. He then drew attention to himself through translations from English ( Alexander Pope , Henry Bolingbroke , William Warburton The Alliance between Church and State ) and Spanish ( Baltasar Gracián El Politico ) historical studies and a study of the English financial system. He was an advisor to the Parlement of Metz, secretary to the Duke of Orleans, in 1749 a member of the Commission for the Regulation of Anglo-French Interests in Canada ( Acadia ) and royal representative to the India Company ( Mississippi Company ).

On March 4, 1759, on the advice of the Marquise de Pompadour, he was appointed general controller of finances, contrôleur général des finances . He was supposed to put the finances shattered by the Seven Years' War back in order. However, after he had introduced taxes on land and other signs of wealth for rich nobles (the nobility and the church were not taxed at the time), reduced pensions for state officials and enforced other measures such as the melting down of gold and silver goods under martial law, he met with fierce opposition and was relieved of his post on November 21, 1759. His successor in office was Henri-Léonard Bertin .

He then retired to Bry-sur-Marne. In addition to historical and philosophical work, he left translations from English and Spanish and travelogues. A Political Testament published under his name in 1772 is apocryphal .

The Castle Bry-sur-Marne was owned by de Silhouette since 1760th He died here in 1767

Numerous caricatures appeared during his time as finance minister and his name Silhouette became a household word in France for a man who only led a shadowy existence or à la Silhouette as a synonym for cheap goods. It was said that out of avarice he would not decorate his castle with paintings but with paper cutouts, which at the time were a cheap alternative to paintings. By critics who considered the as a cheap imitation and name Silhouette transferred to, the term was also silhouettes transferred (silhouettes).

The island silhouette of the Seychelles is named after him.

Works (selection)

  • Voyage d'Espagne et de Portugal (31 août - 24 decembre 1729) (1730)
  • Idée générale du gouvernement et de la morale des Chinois, tirée particulièrement des ouvrages de Confucius. (1729)
  • Idée générale du gouvernement et de la morale des Chinois, et réponse à trois critiques. Quillau, Paris (1731)

literature

  • JP Clement, A. Lemoine: M. de Silhouette. Paris, 1872

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David Arthur Ross: The Early Career of Etienne de Silhouette. University of California, Los Angeles 1973
  2. ↑ Horst Geckeler, Ulrich Hoinkes: Panorama of the lexical semantics: thematic commemorative publication on the occasion of the 60th birthday of Horst Geckeler . Gunter Narr Verlag, 1995, p. 806 ( full text in Google Book Search).
personal data
SURNAME Silhouette, Etienne de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French finance minister under Louis XV.
DATE OF BIRTH July 5, 1709
PLACE OF BIRTH Limoges
DATE OF DEATH January 20, 1767
Place of death Bry-sur-Marne