Colbert, Jean-Baptiste

(1619-1683)

   statesman

   Known for his efforts to reorganize France's economic structure so as to increase revenue and reach self-sufficiency, Jean-Baptiste Colbert was born in Reims, the son of a drapery merchant. He obtained employment at age 19 in the Ministry of War and, in 1651, was hired by King louis XIV's chief minister, cardinal mazarin, to handle his personal finances. Before he died, Mazarin recommended Colbert to the king for preferment. As adviser to the monarch, Colbert prosecuted the superintendent of finance for embezzlement and, in doing so, gained the king's confidence. After serving as intendant of finances, superintendent of royal buildings, arts and manufactures, and secretary of state to the royal household and the navy, in 1665 Colbert was made comptroller general of finance. Proceeding to reconstruct industry and commerce along the lines of mercantilism, he began a large-scale overhaul of state finances while continuing to prosecute officials for graft and corruption. With government control of industry and protective tariffs and navigation laws, Colbert organized state colonization and trading companies, established model factories, including Gobelins, Beauvais, and La Savonnerie, and extended French trade and industry. The name "Colbertism" is given to his mercantile fiscal and economic system, and he created the East and West India Companies based on the Dutch model. As secretary of state for naval affairs, Colbert directed the building of a network of roads and canals, the fortification of seaports, strengthening of the navy, and the writing of marine and colonial legal codes. His policies can be considered, however, to have inhibited agriculture and the free development of industry in France. Colbert gave positions to his own family, made brilliant marriages for his daughters, and was the head of a clan that continuously opposed that of the marquis de louvois, the le tellier family. As a patron of the arts and culture (with charles le brun), he also founded several learned academies (Inscriptions, 1663; Sciences, 1666) and societies (now part of the Institut de France), established the Paris Observatory (1667), and sponsored many public works. Colbert was named to the Académie Française in 1667.