Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Romain
Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Romain or Romain (* unknown; † July 1780) was a French engineer. As one of the contributors to the Encyclopédie , he wrote almost 70 articles on the subject of the West Indies .
Romain was a nobleman ( écuyer ). In 1734 he made a map of the Caribbean island of Martinique , where he lived at the time. Six years later he was appointed assistant engineer ( sous-ingénieur ) and sent to Grenada to improve the island's fortifications. In a letter from 1742, his superiors commented positively on Romain's achievements and also stated that he was born unpaid (“né sans biens”) and that he suffered from a lack of money. In a reply from Versailles , Romain was then awarded a bonus. Finally, around 1748, he was promoted to chief engineer of Grenada.
Kafker assumes that Le Romain has not published anything in writing other than his contributions to the Encyclopédie . Le Romain was recruited as a contributor even before the first volume was published in 1751 and wrote almost 70 articles for volumes 3 to 16. From the publisher's point of view, his recruitment for the encyclopedia project was a stroke of luck - Le Romain had all the knowledge about the West Indies from your own perspective.
More than half of his contributions to the Encyclopédie consist of short articles on plants, animals, minerals and the geography of the Antilles . In a smaller number of articles, Le Romain deals in detail with the manufacture of agricultural products such as sugar and indigo . Those contributions that are devoted to the customs and living conditions of the indigenous population and African slaves are written from a Eurocentric perspective. Articles like Sucrerie (German: sugar plantation ) and Nègres considérés comme esclaves dans les colonies de l'Amerique (German: Negro slaves in the American colonies ) show the same contemporary prejudices as the article Nègres (German: Negroes ) by his colleague Jean Henri Samuel Formey . However, Le Romain rejects brutal treatment of African slaves for legal, moral and economic reasons.
On October 29, 1756, Le Romain stayed in Paris, where he appeared together with other encyclopedists as a witness to the marriage of Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach and Charlotte-Suzanne Daine. Four years later he was still living and working in Grenada . After the British conquered the island in 1762, Le Romain presumably returned to France, after which his trace is lost.
literature
- swell
- Plan Martinique par J B Pr. Romain , dated 1734. Archives nationales, Section Outre-Mer, Paris, DFC Martinique 149 B.
- Representations
- Le Romain, or Romain, Jean-Baptiste-Pierre. In: Frank Arthur Kafker: The encyclopedists as individuals. A biographical dictionary of the authors of the Encyclopédie. Oxford 1988, ISBN 0-7294-0368-8 , pp. 211f. (There also further information on further literature).
Web links
- List of the contributions made by Le Romain to the Encyclopédie with links to the full text about the ARTFL project (incomplete).
Individual evidence
- ^ Letter from de Champigny and de La Croix, dated November 19, 1742. Archives nationales, Fonds Colonies, C 8A 54, f. 105 BC Quoted here from Kafker: The encyclopedists as individuals. P. 211.
- ↑ Kafker: The encyclopedists as worth individuals. P. 211.
- ↑ See Kafker: The encyclopedists as individuals. P. 212.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Le Romain, Jean-Baptiste-Pierre |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Romain, Jean-Baptiste-Pierre |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French engineer and contributor to the Encyclopédie |
| DATE OF BIRTH | before 1734 |
| DATE OF DEATH | after 1762 |