Abbe Guillaume Thomas Francois Raynal

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Guillaume Thomas François Raynal, Abbé , 1713–96, French historian and philosopher. Raynal was a priest, but he was dismissed from his parish in Paris; he then turned to writing and sought the society and collaboration of the philosophes. Two historical works, one on the Netherlands (1747) and one on the English Parliament (1748), established his career. His most important work, completed with the assistance of Denis Diderot , was a six-volume history of the European colonies in the Indies and Americas (1770). It was condemned by the Parlement of Paris (1781) for impiety and its dangerous ideas on the right of the people to revolt and to give or withhold consent to taxation. Nevertheless, the History was extremely popular, going through 30 editions between 1772 and 1789; the radical tone becoming more pronounced in later editions. Placed on the Index of the Roman Catholic Church in 1774, Raynal's book was burned and he was forced into exile in 1781. Allowed to return to France, but not Paris, in 1784; his Parisian banishment was rescinded in 1790. Elected to the States General in 1789, he refused to serve and later advocated a constitutional monarchy.

Raynal, Guillaume Thomas FrançOis (1713–96), French author, usually called Abbé Raynal because as a young man he received orders as a Jesuit. He is best known as the author of L'Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (Amsterdam, 4 vols., 1770), written with the assistance of such philosophes as Diderot. The work lacks unity and proportion and merely summarizes the ideas of others, but its indictment of royalty, attack on the tyranny of the Church, and praise of the English settlers in America made it democratic propaganda, read with enthusiasm by Chateaubriand, Jefferson, and Crèvecoeur. The last's Letters from an American Farmer was dedicated to Raynal and often paralleled his work, whose revised and enlarged edition in French (1772–74) was translated into English (1776), extracts being frequently issued under other titles. Paine's Letter to the Abbé Raynal (1782) corrects errors in Raynal's The Revolution of America (1781).