Jean-Baptiste Labat

Jean-Baptiste Labat (* 1663 near Paris ; † January 6, 1738 in Paris) was a missionary , plantation owner and travel writer.

Live and act

Jean-Baptiste Labat entered the Dominican Order in 1684 and went to the West Indies as a missionary in 1694 . There he owned a plantation where he kept slaves and burned rum, before returning to a monastery near Toul in 1705 . He was later appointed Procurator General of his Order's Mission in East India . In 1709 he went to Spain and Italy for three years on behalf of his order. He then lived in the monastery of his order in Paris until his death.

Here he began to write down his travel experiences in detail. His six-volume travel reports from the New World were very vivid and popular in Europe until modern times. They are considered to be important contemporary documents. Labat's eight-volume travelogues from Spain and Italy became less well known. They once again show the author to be an inquisitive observer, who particularly dealt critically with the conditions in the Papal States.

Jean-Baptiste Labat died on January 6, 1738 at the age of 75 in Paris and was buried in the Jacobin convent on rue Saint-Honoré .

Works

Nouveau voyage aux îles de l'Amérique (Paris 1722, 6 volumes)
Voyage du Chevalier Demarchais en Guinee, iles voisines, et a Cayenne, fait en 1725, 1726, et 1727 (Paris, 1730, 4 volumes)
Nouvelle relation de l'Afrique occidentale (Paris 1728, 5 volumes)
Relation historique de l'Ethiopie occidentale , 1732
Voyage en Espagne et en Italie (Paris 1730, 8 volumes)

literature

Father Labat's slave report, adventurous years in the Caribbean 1690–1705, Erdmann edition 1984 ISBN 3865031404
Heinrich Pleticha, Siegfried Augustin: Lexicon of adventure and travel literature from Africa to Winnetou. Edition Erdmann in K. Thienemanns Verlag, Stuttgart, Vienna, Bern 1999, ISBN 3 522 60002 9

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Labat, Jean-Baptiste
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Missionary, plantation owner and travel writer
DATE OF BIRTH	1663
PLACE OF BIRTH	near Paris
DATE OF DEATH	January 6, 1738
Place of death	Paris