André-Daniel Laffon de Ladébat

author

André-Daniel Laffon de Ladébat

1746–1829

A Bordeaux businessman turned reformer, he moved from maritime commerce into public life and became known for his philanthropy and opposition to slavery. His life traces a striking path through the upheavals of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France.

1 Audiobook

Discours sur la nécessité et les moyens de détruire l'esclavage dans les colonies Lu à la séance publique de l'Académie royale des sciences, belles lettres et arts de Bordeaux, le 26 Août 1788

Discours sur la nécessité et les moyens de détruire l'esclavage dans les colonies Lu à la séance publique de l'Académie royale des sciences, belles lettres et arts de Bordeaux, le 26 Août 1788

by André-Daniel Laffon de Ladébat

About the author

Born in Bordeaux in 1746, he came from a Protestant merchant family involved in shipping and trade. He studied at the Protestant University of Franeker in the Netherlands, then entered his father's business and took a strong interest in practical reform, including agriculture and industry.

During the French Revolution, he served in public office and later sat in national assemblies. Sources consistently describe him as a financier, politician, philanthropist, and abolitionist, and he is remembered for supporting prison reform and other civic causes as well as for his stand against the slave trade.

He died in Paris in 1829. Today, he stands out less as a literary figure than as an engaged public man of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, shaped by commerce, reform, and the moral debates of his age.