Jean (also Johan or Joan) Luzac (1746 in Leiden – January 12, 1807) was a Dutch lawyer, journalist and professor in Greek and History, of Huguenot origin. He was the most influential newspaper editor in the Western world in the years immediately preceding the French Revolution, and his sister Emilie married his fellow Patriot Wijbo Fijnje. His newspaper, the ''

Gazette de Leyde ''Nouvelles Extraordinaires de Divers Endroits'' (English: "Extraordinary News from Various Places") or ''Gazette de Leyde'' (Gazette of Leiden) was the most important newspaper of record of the international European newspapers of the late 17th ...

'', published in Leiden, served as Europe's

newspaper of record A newspaper of record is a major national newspaper with large circulation whose editorial and news-gathering functions are considered authoritative and independent; they are thus "newspapers of record by reputation" and include some of the o ...

. Its readers included Louis XVI, Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson, and all the influential rulers and diplomats of the day. Universally respected for the quality of its information, the ''Gazette'' supported the American revolutionaries and the Dutch Patriot movement of the 1780s. When John Adams arrived in the Netherlands, he immediately paid Luzac a visit, to provide him with full reports of the constitutional debates in America. Shortly after this, Luzac published a Dutch translation of the Massachusetts Constitution, which affected public opinion about the

American War of Independence The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of t ...

in the Netherlands. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1789 and a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1791. Luzac was critical of the violence of the French Revolution, however, and he had to abandon the editorship of the paper in 1798 for six months, under pressure from the pro-French government of the

Batavian Republic The Batavian Republic ( nl, Bataafse Republiek; french: République Batave) was the successor state to the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. It was proclaimed on 19 January 1795 and ended on 5 June 1806, with the accession of Louis Bona ...

. He died in a gunpowder barge explosion in Leiden in 1807.

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* ''This article is based entirely or partially on its equivalent on Dutch Wikipedia''. {{DEFAULTSORT:Luzac, Jean Dutch journalists 1746 births 1807 deaths Dutch newspaper editors Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of the Dutch Patriots faction People from Leiden Burials at Pieterskerk, Leiden Academic staff of Leiden University