Research topic: Jacques Necker

Jacques Necker , 1732-1804, French financier and statesman, b. Geneva, Switzerland. In 1750 he went to Paris and entered banking. He rose rapidly to importance, established a bank of his own, and became a director of the French East India Company. As a writer, Necker opposed the then fashionable physiocrats and free traders; his eulogy on Jean Baptiste Colbert was lauded (1773) by the French Academy, and his Essai sur la législation et le commerce des grains (1775) criticized the free trade in grains advocated by A. R. J. Turgot . In 1776, Necker, who had previously aided th... Read more