Jean-Joseph de Laborde (banker)

Jean-Joseph de Laborde

Jean-Joseph de Laborde (* 1724 in Jaca , Spain ; † (executed) April 18, 1794 in Paris ) was a French entrepreneur and banker .

Live and act

Jean-Joseph de Laborde achieved great prosperity as a trader in Bayonne in trade with the West Indies and Spain . Shortly afterwards he was by Louis XV. appointed court banker and gained the confidence of the Minister Étienne-François de Choiseul .

De Laborde became the Marquis knighted , but never made use of the title.

After Choiseul's overthrow, he withdrew from most of the business. But when the French government was in need of money at the outbreak of the American War of Independence , he obtained 12 million livres in gold through personal credit in a short time and thus made it possible for the expedition with 6,000 men under Rochambeau , which George Washington to battle the British, to sail supported by Yorktown .

He spent 24,000 livres annually in support of the poor, and in 1788 about 400,000 livres to build four large hospitals in Paris.

During the French Revolution , de Laborde lived in seclusion at his castle Méreville until he was brought before the Revolutionary Court because of his wealth. He was the main tenant, fermiers généraux . On charges of being associated with usurers , he was sentenced to death on April 18, 1794 and executed the same day.

Two of his four sons, who served in the Navy , accompanied the geographer Jean-François de La Pérouse on his circumnavigation and died on the coast of California . The eldest son François Louis Joseph de Laborde (1761-1801) also served in the Navy and later became royal treasurer and member of the National Assembly , but later emigrated to England , where he died in London in 1801 .

In 1789, Laborde owned the most valuable sugar plantations in the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue .

literature

• Bernard Foubert: Les Habitations Laborde à Saint-Domingue dans la seconde moitié du dix-huitième siècle . Doctorat d'État, Paris 4, 1990.