Profile Major Works Resources

Abbé Pierre-Joseph-André Roubaud, 1730–1789.


French cleric and prolific Enlightenment journalist, allied with the Physiocrats.

In 1759, the Abbé Roubaud and partner Le Camus founded and edited the Journal de Commerce, one of the first French business newspapers, published in Brussels. It was closed in 1762. The newspaper was re-launched in January 1765 in Paris, under a new title Gazette du Commerce.  Alongside it, the Gazette produced a monthly supplement of weightier articles, known as the Journal de l'agriculture, du commerce et des finances.  Later that year, the young Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours was appointed the editor of the JdACF and transformed it into the mouthpiece of the Physiocratic school.  This lasted for about a year and a half before the Gazette director Thomas-François de Grâce dismissed Dupont and re-oriented it towards the Neo-Colbertistes.  The Abbé Roubaud took over the Gazette and JdACF from de Grâce in 1770.  Roubaud began editing it himself, re-orienting it back towards the liberal camp, until it was suspended in December 1774. 

Besides the journal, the Abbé Roubaud's main contributions to  Physiocracy consist in largely criticizing critics.  Through a series of letters in the Gazette in 1770, Abbé Roubaud took the leading in refuting Galiani's Dialogues.  In 1774, Roubaud took up the pen in a debate via public letters with the anti-physiocrat S.M.H. Linguet. 

After penning several attacks on policy abuses of the Maurepas administration, Abbé Roubaud was exiled in 1775 (along with Abbé Baudeau). Both returned the next year by the good offices of Jacques Necker.

An opponent of colonialism and the slave trade, Roubaud authored a vociferous critique of the East India companies (1768), especially the British one, denouncing their transition from commercial companies to imperialistic, political and rent-seeking institutions (note that this is before the Hastings impeachment or the revelations of British misrule in India). He also composed a massive multi-volume history (1770-75) of Asia, Africa and America.

 

  

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Major Works of Abbé Roubaud

  • [M. L. Ar.] Le politiques indien, ou considérations sur les colonies des Indes occidentales, 1768
  • Représentations aux magistrats, contenant l'éxposition raisonée des faits relatifs à la liberté du commerce et de la liberté, 1769 [bk]
  • [Anon] Récréations économiques, ou lettres de l'auteur des 'Représentations aux magistrats', à M. le chevalier Zanobi, principal interlocuteur des Dialogues sur le commerce des bleds, 1770 [bk] (contra Galiani)
  • [M.L.A.R.] Histoire générale de l'Asie, de l'Afrique et l'Amérique, contenant des discours sur l'histoire ancienne des peuples de ces contrées, leur histoire moderne & la description des lieux, avec des remarques sure leur histoire naturelle, & des observations sur les religions, les gouvernemens, les sciences, les arts, le commerce, les coutumes, les moeurs, les caracteres &c. des nations., 1770-75, fifteen volumes [1770: v.1, v.2, v.3, v.4, v.5, v.6,  v.7 (missing), 1771: v.8, v.9, v.10, v.11, v.12, 1775: v.13, v.14, v.15]
  • Roubaud's replies to Linguet: Gazette d'agriculture, commerce, arts et finances vol. for 1774: p.709-11, 748-51, 828-32.
  • Nouveaux synonymes françois,  1785-86, v.1, v.2, v.3, v.4 [2nd ed. retitled Synonymes français, 1796, v.1, v.2, v.3, v.4]

 
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Resources on  Abbé Roubaud

 

 

 
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