The , more often known simply as , is an encyclopaedia on commerce between
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
and the
Far East
The ''Far East'' was a European term to refer to the geographical regions that includes East and Southeast Asia as well as the Russian Far East to a lesser extent. South Asia is sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons.
The ter ...
, Africa, and the Americas. It was published anonymously in
Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...
in 1770 and attributed to Abbot
Guillaume Thomas Raynal. It achieved considerable popularity and went through numerous editions. The third edition, published in Geneva in 1780, was
censored in France the following year.
The ' filled a public need for knowledge in the
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intel ...
, answering questions that preoccupied the minds of those in the late 18th century, around the time of the
French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...
.
Content
Raynal's idea was to write a history of European enterprises in the East Indies and the
New World
The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 3 ...
, having observed the influence of the great explorations on European civilisation.
The work first discusses the
Portuguese and their
oriental colonies, going on to give a history of
British and
French enterprises, then
Spanish,
Dutch, and other European powers, in the Orient. Next, it turns its attention to all of the various European conquests, losses, colonies and commerce in the Americas. European commerce with various coastal regions of Africa is discussed, mainly on slavery and particularly trans-Atlantic slave trade. Finally, there is a series of essays on religion, politics, war, commerce, moral philosophy,
belles-lettres
is a category of writing, originally meaning beautiful or fine writing. In the modern narrow sense, it is a label for literary works that do not fall into the major categories such as fiction, poetry, or drama. The phrase is sometimes used pejora ...
, and so on.
Style
The ' lacks consistency in its style: Raynal limited himself to collecting articles provided by friends and pieces borrowed from existing published texts, without taking the trouble to rework them.
Authors
Although the book was published anonymously, some authors are known, if only in name.
* According to
Melchior Grimm,
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot (; ; 5 October 171331 July 1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer, best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the ''Encyclopédie'' along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. He was a promine ...
contributed a large part of the work. He is certainly one of its main contributors, and it is estimated he wrote between a third and a fifth of the book, especially the parts on philosophical themes.
* The nineteenth chapter, summarising doctrine and drawing conclusions, was by
Alexandre Deleyre
Alexandre Deleyre (5 or 10 January 1726, Portets near Bordeaux – 10 March 1797, Paris aged 71) was an 18th-century French man of letters and translator from Latin. He was a friend of J.J. Rousseau, who used his translations of Lucretius for co ...
.
* On subjects concerning commerce, Raynal used the writings of
Jacques Paulze
Ancient and noble French family names, Jacques, Jacq, or James are believed to originate from the Middle Ages in the historic northwest Brittany region in France, and have since spread around the world over the centuries. To date, there are over ...
,
d’Aranda and
Manuel de Faria e Sousa
Manuel de Faria e Sousa (; es, Faria y Sousa; 18 March 1590 – 3 June 1649) was a Portuguese historian and poet. He frequently wrote in Spanish.
He was born of an ancient Portuguese noble family, probably at Pombeiro, studied in Braga for s ...
.
* On philosophical subjects, in addition to Diderot, he used the writings of
Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach,
Jacques-André Naigeon
Jacques-André Naigeon (15 July 1738, Paris – 28 February 1810, Paris) was a French artist, atheist– materialist philosopher, editor and man of letters best known for his contributions to the ''Encyclopédie'' and for reworking Baron d'Hol ...
and
Jean de Pechméja
* He also used work by Abbé Martin, the medical doctor Dubreuil, Valadier,
Jean-François de Saint-Lambert
Jean-François is a French given name. Notable people bearing the given name include:
* Jean-François Carenco (born 1952), French politician
* Jean-François Champollion (1790–1832), French Egyptologist
* Jean-François Clervoy (born 1958), Fre ...
,
Joseph-Louis Lagrange
Joseph-Louis Lagrange (born Giuseppe Luigi Lagrangia[Jacques-André Naigeon
Jacques-André Naigeon (15 July 1738, Paris – 28 February 1810, Paris) was a French artist, atheist– materialist philosopher, editor and man of letters best known for his contributions to the ''Encyclopédie'' and for reworking Baron d'Hol ...](_blank)
.
Proud of his work, Raynal sometimes forgot it was only as good as its contributors made it. This can be seen in the pieces supplied by a Dr Sanchez, the author on
Portugal
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...
and its possessions in the East and West Indies. Pechméja once found
Sébastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort
Sébastien-Roch Nicolas, known in his adult life as Nicolas Chamfort and as Sébastien Nicolas de Chamfort (; 6 April 1741 – 13 April 1794), was a French writer, best known for his epigrams and aphorisms. He was secretary to Louis XVI's sist ...
reading the ': "What have you found?", he asked. "I have just been reading an excellent piece, but it finishes with such an awful turn of phrase" (french: Je viens de lire un morceau excellent, mais qui se termine par une phrase pitoyable). "Let me see: you're right. I much think that Raynal writes is nonsense; he has added that phrase, the rest is mine". (french: Faites-moi donc voir; vous avez raison. Je pensais bien que Raynal ferait des sottises ; il a ajouté cette phrase, le reste est de moi.) When Raynal left Paris, Chamford said ("He is tired of living with his author").
Reception
![Guillaumethomasraynal](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Guillaumethomasraynal.jpg)
The ' was a great success. In France, over thirty different editions were published between 1770 and 1787, and over fifty were published abroad. Abridged versions were published called ("Potted Raynal") and ("Children's Raynal").
Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who ...
proclaimed himself a "willing disciple of Raynal" (french: zélé disciple de Raynal) and took the book with him on his
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
ian campaign.
Toussaint Louverture
François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture (; also known as Toussaint L'Ouverture or Toussaint Bréda; 20 May 1743 – 7 April 1803) was a Haitian general and the most prominent leader of the Haitian Revolution. During his life, Louverture ...
read the book and was especially inspired by a passage that predicted slave revolution in the West Indies.
Horace Walpole
Horatio Walpole (), 4th Earl of Orford (24 September 1717 – 2 March 1797), better known as Horace Walpole, was an English writer, art historian, man of letters, antiquarian, and Whigs (British political party), Whig politician.
He had Strawb ...
wrote to
Marie Du Deffand: "It attacks all governments and all religions!" (french: Il attaque tous les gouvernements et toutes les religions!).
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot heavily criticized the book in a letter to
André Morellet
André Morellet (7 March 172712 January 1819) was a French economist, author of various writings, contributor to the and one of the last Enlightenment Age .''
Biography
Born at Lyon, and educated by the Jesuits there, Morellet completed his ...
:
At the time, the ' was considered an encyclopaedia of the colonial age and the Bible of
anticolonialism in the
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intel ...
.
In 1780, Raynal produced the third edition of his ', which was characterised by bolder and more violent tirades than the previous two, and under his signature at the bottom of his portrait he added the inscription: ("In defence of humanity, truth, and freedom").
Louis XVI
Louis XVI (''Louis-Auguste''; ; 23 August 175421 January 1793) was the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. He was referred to as ''Citizen Louis Capet'' during the four months just before he was ...
referred the book to the
Parlement de Paris for censorship, and also to the Church. It was banned, and burned by the public hangman on 29 May 1781. Declared a public enemy, Raynal was forced to leave France for
Prussia
Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an em ...
, where he stayed the large part of his exile. He was allowed to return to France in 1787, on condition he did not enter Paris.
Today, scholar Jenny Mander notes that there are mixed feelings and overall confusion as to whether ' is an anti-colonialist text since there are so many contradictions within the piece itself. On the one side, Raynal makes many statements that are against the overall inhumanity of Europeans and criticizes their seizing of land that is taken solely for European gain and leaves native people vulnerable. For these reasons, some do consider the text to be anti-colonialist. On the other hand, Raynal and his contributors still find slaves and slave labor as essential to the European economy, and they hold their plans for instant emancipation for all slaves. With so many opposing opinions and several other writers who contributed their perspective, reception today is also clearly quite jumbled.
Editions
Current
*
Available online
* 1770: ''Histoire philosophique et politique des établissemens & du commerce des européens dans les deux Indes''], Amsterdam,
.n. 1770, 6
octavo volumes, at
* 1773
''Atlas portatif pour servir l'intelligence de l'histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes '' Amsterdam, 1773
* 1780: ''Histoire philosophique et politique des établissemens et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes'', Geneva, J.-L. Pellet, 1780, 4 volumes plus an atlas in
quarto
Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...
,
BnF No
FRBNF31182796m* 1783, English translation of the French 3rd edition which was published in 1780:
''A philosophical and political history of the settlements and trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies'', translated by
J. O. Justamond, London, W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1783, 8 volumes, available (Volum
12345678 at the
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
.
Further reading
Raynal heavily drew on from several contemporaneous works, including:
* ''Recherches Philosophiques sur les Américains'' ("Philosophical Studies of the Americans") by
Corneille de Pauw
* ''L’Homme moral ou, L’homme considéré tant dans l’état de pure nature, que dans la société'' ("The Moral Man, or, Man Considered in a State of Nature, and in Society") by
Pierre-Charles Levesque
* ''
Common Sense
''Common Sense'' is a 47-page pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–1776 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. Writing in clear and persuasive prose, Paine collected various moral and political argu ...
'' by
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain; – In the contemporary record as noted by Conway, Paine's birth date is given as January 29, 1736–37. Common practice was to use a dash or a slash to separate the old-style year from the new-style year. In th ...
* L’''Histoire générale des Voyages'' by
Manuel de Faria e Sousa
Manuel de Faria e Sousa (; es, Faria y Sousa; 18 March 1590 – 3 June 1649) was a Portuguese historian and poet. He frequently wrote in Spanish.
He was born of an ancient Portuguese noble family, probably at Pombeiro, studied in Braga for s ...
.
Sources
*
*
*
*
*
*
References
External links
*
A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies
{{Authority control
French encyclopedias
1770 books
Denis Diderot
Books about imperialism
18th-century encyclopedias