Jean-Baptiste Colbert

French politician and administrator

• Born: August 29, 1619
• Birthplace: Reims, France
• Died: September 6, 1683
• Place of death: Paris, France

Colbert contributed to the reform of the administrative, economic, legal, and cultural foundations of the French monarchy. Historians consider him the founder of the economic and political idea of mercantilism, which predominated in eighteenth century Europe. His founding of several academies of arts, letters, and sciences is perhaps his most enduring legacy.

Early Life

Jean-Baptiste Colbert (zhahn-baw-teest kohl-behr) was born in the city of Reims in the Champagne region of France. Little is known of Colbert’s childhood or education beyond that he sprang from a family of wholesale cloth merchants turned financiers and that he attended the Jesuit college in Reims. Changes in trading routes and European economic patterns had dramatically reduced Reims’s commercial significance by the 1620’s, and the once prosperous Colbert family moved to Paris in 1629, seeking wider opportunities as bankers and financiers. Apparently, young Colbert remained behind in Reims to complete his education and in 1634 took up a position at a banking house in Lyons. Shortly afterward, however, he moved to Paris and took employment as an assistant to a notary. Sometime before 1640, he obtained a position as a royal war commissioner, a minor venal office his father probably purchased for him.

Colbert took his first real steps up the political and social ladders in the early 1640’s. First, family connections allowed him to attach himself to the entourage of Michel Le Tellier, France’s war minister. Then, with deliberate calculation he married Marie Charon, the daughter of a wealthy financier, who brought a very large dowry (100,000 livres) to the marriage. Sometime after Le Tellier acquired the post of secretary of state for war in 1643, Colbert became an assistant to the secretary and then his personal emissary to Jules Mazarin . From that point until early 1651, when he entered Mazarin’s service, Colbert’s loyalty to Le Tellier’s cause and his aptitude for political and financial dealings proved themselves time and again. Indeed, despite his initial dislike for Colbert, it was those very qualities of loyalty, service, and efficiency that prompted Mazarin to request Le Tellier to release Colbert to enter his own service.

From 1651 until Mazarin’s death in 1661, Colbert served Mazarin faithfully. During the turbulent years of civil war (the Wars of the Fronde, 1648-1653) and Mazarin’s two political exiles (1651-1653), Colbert acted as the minister’s personal financial agent in Paris and as his representative at court. So great was his skill for these tasks that he managed to amass a fortune in Mazarin’s name. Following the end of the Fronde and Mazarin’s return to Paris, Colbert once again proved himself the loyal servant of his patron’s interests, advising the minister on political matters and continuing to enlarge Mazarin’s fortune (and his own) through the traffic in venal offices, manipulation of the monarchy’s debts, and financial speculations. On his deathbed, Mazarin commended Colbert to Louis XIV’s service.

Life’s Work

Following Mazarin’s death, Louis XIV’s dramatic announcement of the plan to act as his own first minister meant that Colbert would never rise to the heights of political power or personal wealth that Cardinal de Richelieu and Mazarin had attained. Nevertheless, as a member of the king’s financial council (from 1661), as controller general of finance (from 1665), as secretary of state for the navy (from 1668), and as secretary of state for the king’s household (from 1669), Colbert made his mark on the first half of Louis’s reign in ways so profound as to set the political form of Louis’s absolutism as the European model for centralized monarchy.

Colbert’s rise in the power structure of Louis’s government resulted from his zeal in pursuing reforms aimed at eradicating the very same ministerial abuses of power and finance he himself had helped Mazarin practice during the 1650’s. With Mazarin’s death, the greatest threat to Louis XIV’s power and to his resolution to act as his own first minister came from Nicolas Fouquet, the king’s powerful superintendent of finance. Fouquet was, in fact, the most logical successor to Mazarin’s ministry. Clearly the richest man in France, Fouquet’s willingness to finance the monarchy through loans and pledges based on his personal fortune had allowed Louis to pursue war against Spain to a successful conclusion in 1659. In short, Fouquet had personally acted as one of the monarchy’s chief bankers throughout the 1650’s. Such openhandedness in financing the monarchy was only possible because Fouquet had used his position in the government to enrich himself beyond all measure.

Within months after Mazarin’s death, Louis and Colbert had spun an elaborate trap for Fouquet, which culminated in a dramatic arrest on charges of treason and financial peculation (embezzlement). Fouquet not only held a stranglehold on Louis’s finances but also maintained private fortresses, troops, and a personal navy stronger than the king’s. Additionally, Fouquet enjoyed tremendous popular support. Colbert, formerly on close terms with Fouquet, undertook personal charge of the prosecution and succeeded in gaining a conviction on the charges of financial misconduct. Many condemned Colbert as a hypocrite, claiming that Fouquet’s crimes in the 1650’s had been no worse than those of Mazarin (or Colbert’s own). At a personal level Fouquet was treated unfairly, but this case actually concerned crimes of the past less than it did the future direction of the monarchy. Through the Fouquet prosecution, Louis signaled his absolute determination to subordinate the machineries of royal finance, administration, and justice to his personal will. Henceforth, the king would tolerate no overly ambitious or powerful subjects. Breaking Fouquet was an object lesson to anyone who might try to emulate the models of either the Cardinal de Richelieu or Mazarin.

Colbert himself belonged to that group of financiers and political actors who had risen to power under Richelieu and Mazarin. His own part in the Fouquet prosecution signaled his acceptance of Louis’s lesson—the rules of high politics had changed. From his first efforts to assist the king in laying his trap for Fouquet through his death in 1683, Colbert never forgot that lesson. Beginning with the dismantling and royal seizure of Fouquet’s financial empire, then moving on to the establishment of special chambers of justice to investigate, punish, and fine wrongdoers among the entire class of royal financiers, Colbert launched a financial reform that reversed Louis’s kingdom from its position as the greatest debtor state in Europe to a status as the richest and most rationally administered.

Colbert proved tireless in his efforts to reform and regularize royal taxation, government contracting, financial administration, and economic regulation. He also showed himself equally willing to employ the monarchy’s resources to build new manufacturing, to establish colonies and trading companies, and to reform the legal system. Altogether, this complex of reforms and royal initiatives constituted a whole that historians have labeled “Colbertisme” in its particular application to France and mercantilism in its more general application as the model for the economic and political thinking that dominated Europe in the eighteenth century.

The specifics involved in Colbert’s mercantilism defy easy summary, but the main theoretical lines can be delineated. The state was to foster and support new manufacturing, both through direct subsidies and the establishment of prohibitive import duties. Regulating everything concerning the quality, type, and quantities of goods, France would become an economically independent state enjoying a surplus in the value of trade export over the value of imports. Colonies would provide raw materials and markets for finished goods. Trade with other European states was to be limited to exports paid in cash. Other trading nations such as the Dutch and the English constituted France’s natural enemies, and France’s greatness depended on undercutting or destroying these enemies’ ability to compete economically. Finally, the success of the entire system must depend on a debt-free, centrally organized economy.

In practice, this theoretical framework called for a massive overhaul of the French economy and political administration. The task was obviously beyond the reach of Colbert’s lifetime, and his success must be measured in terms of progress rather than actual accomplishments. France was an overwhelmingly agricultural nation, but Colbert did lay the basis for a new system of state-controlled manufacturing establishments, especially in the luxury trades. Moreover, despite hindrances to trade, the government regulations gained for French goods an unparalleled reputation for quality and value. His efforts to build a new navy and the merchant ships necessary for colonization and the protection of trade made considerable gains—enough so, in fact, that the French navy seriously challenged English/Dutch supremacy for a time. Most important, his efforts at reforming the tax collection system (not the actual tax burdens on the population), the management of debt, and the administration of the kingdom’s finances yielded dramatic results in reestablishing the state’s solvency.

Within the new political order Louis XIV’s personal reign created, Colbert was only one of several powerful ministers who acted strictly in the king’s name while serving at his pleasure. Such a system was bound to create disagreements and conflicts among these ministers, and Colbert was involved in his share. The most important of these long-running political enmities put him in conflict with Le Tellier, his former patron, and Le Tellier’s son the marquis de Louvois. Le Tellier and Louvois, as successive secretaries of state for war, pushed relentlessly for turning the royal treasury to the purposes of strengthening the French army. They also urged a militarist foreign policy on Louis as the best approach to building the monarchy. Colbert opposed both of these policies, urging economic warfare instead.

Initially successful in winning the king’s ear, Colbert progressively lost ground to the Le Tellier/Louvois faction as the reign unfolded. Louis did indeed pursue an increasingly militaristic policy, and as he did Louvois’s influence waxed, while Colbert’s waned. Nor was this basic policy issue the only one on that Colbert suffered reverses. Although he was the superintendent of the king’s buildings, he strongly opposed the lavish building program Louis launched in renovating the palace at Versailles. Colbert wanted Louis to make Paris itself his capital and the Louvre his principal residence. He did succeed in making dramatic improvements in the sanitation, police, and public works of Paris, but here, too, his basic policy was at odds with the king’s wishes. Despite Colbert’s efforts to make Paris the modern Rome, his death really marked the eclipse of the city of Paris as the focal point of French absolutism. Similarly, as a proponent of religious toleration, Colbert failed to sway the king from his policy of increasing persecution of French Protestants. Although he did not live to see the results, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes was to prove his views correct.

In another realm, Colbert fared better. As superintendent of the king’s buildings, Colbert assumed responsibility for establishing Louis as the greatest patron of the arts, letters, and science that Europe had ever seen. Starting in 1662 with a European-wide system of French royal patronage for artists and intellectuals, Colbert went on to found the Academy of Inscriptions (1663), the Académie Royale des Sciences (1666), the Académie de France de Rome (1667), the Academy of Architecture (1671), and the first of the formal royal academies in the provinces. Colbert also reorganized and recharted the two existing royal academies, the Académie Française and the Academy of Painting and Sculpture, making them true state-supported institutions. The system of royal academies Colbert created not only served to glorify Louis’s reign but also served the important political purpose of bringing France’s most noted artists, intellectuals, and scientists under royal control. Colbert’s academies survived until the Revolution and as reconstituted under Napoleon still form the basis for the Institut de France. To the extent that French arts, literature, and science have dominated various cultural periods in the three centuries since Colbert’s death, these academies may be claimed as his most enduring legacy to the world.

Significance

Colbert’s life remains particularly difficult to summarize. He was intensely private, noted for his formidable and chilling personality. Moreover, the circumstances under which he served Louis XIV made it difficult for him to give free rein to his ambitions and personality. Historians long debated whether he may have been the actual architect behind the major policies of Louis’s reign; while that interpretation has been rejected, the fact remains that he exercised primary responsibility for implementing the reforms and administrative machinery of Louis’s reign. In that sense, he was the primary “contractor” building the edifice of absolutism that Richelieu, Mazarin, and Louis had designed.

A complex figure, Colbert defies easy categorization in the modern terms of government service. His career spanned a crucial transitional period in the development of political forms, and perhaps his greatest virtue lay in his ability to adjust to and then support inevitable changes.

He died a bitter and cynical man; indeed, his strict, calculating, and rather cold personality had earned him the sobriquet Le Nord (the North) from the fashionable Madame de Sévigné. His influence clearly on the wane, he was acutely conscious of his failure to sway the king from policies he considered destructive to the monarchy’s future. Although he was little mourned at his death, his legacies to France proved themselves of incalculable value.

Bibliography

Beik, William. Louis XIV and Absolutism: A Brief Study with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2000. A collection of newly translated documents that demonstrate how Louis XIV became an absolute monarch. Includes some of Colbert’s memos and letters regarding financial administration, reform in the provinces, and other subjects.

Cole, Charles Woolsey. Colbert and a Century of French Mercantilism. 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1939. This classic treatment of Colbert’s economic ideas and financial reforms is the best starting point for understanding Colbert’s impact on France.

Dent, Julian. Crisis in Finance: Crown, Financiers, and Society in Seventeenth-Century France. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973. A solid exposition of the financial workings of the seventeenth century French monarchy, starkly exposing the weaknesses of the financial administration Colbert set out to reform. Detailed and scholarly, this work offers a strong portrait of the political and social world of the financiers.

Levi, Anthony. Louis XIV. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2004. This biography contains a great deal of information on Colbert’s administration and relationship with Louis XIV.

Maland, David. Culture and Society in Seventeenth-Century France. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970. An excellent survey examining French high culture, political involvements with patronage, and the institutional development of the academies. Treats personalities and conflicts as well as more traditional historical facts.

Ranum, Orest. Artisans of Glory: Writers and Historical Thought in Seventeenth-Century France. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980. Despite the seemingly narrow focus on historical writing, this work offers many general insights into the world of patronage and letters that Colbert sought to control. More importantly, Ranum’s work suggests why such control was important to Colbert and the monarchy.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Paris in the Age of Absolutism. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1968. Ranum traces the cultural, social, and political history of Paris from the reign of Henry IV through Colbert’s death. Invaluable as a guide to understanding the aims and purposes of Colbert’s cultural ideas and Louis’s policies.

Root, Hilton L. Peasants and King in Burgundy: Agrarian Foundations of French Absolutism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. Focused primarily on developments in eighteenth century France, demonstrating the profound effects of Colbert’s financial and administrative reforms. Tracing the development of village corporatism in Burgundy, this work shows many connections between Colbert and struggles over political reform in the next century.

Wolf, John B. Louis XIV. New York: W. W. Norton, 1968. A scholarly biography of Louis XIV, this work contains invaluable material concerning Colbert’s relations with the king. Particularly strong in explaining the political significance of Louis’s decision to rule in his own right and the development of a new ministerial system in the 1660’s.