author
baron Daniel Lescallier
1743–1822
An 18th- and early 19th-century French naval and colonial administrator, he moved through an unusually wide range of roles, from maritime service and colonial government to diplomacy and learned societies. His career also left a substantial paper trail as a cartographer, hydrographer, and writer on naval and colonial affairs.
1 Audiobook
Réflexions sur le sort des Noirs dans nos colonies
by baron Daniel Lescallier
About the author
Born in Lyon on November 4, 1743, and dying in Paris on May 14, 1822, he served the French state across sea service, colonial administration, and diplomacy. Sources consistently describe him as a maritime and colonial administrator who also worked as governor, colonial prefect, maritime prefect, and later consul general in the United States.
Reference works connected to French scholarly and library institutions also portray him as more than an administrator: he is associated with cartography and hydrography, and his published work helped preserve practical knowledge about navigation, ports, and colonial questions. The French national learned-society record further notes that he was a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences from 1816 to 1822.
His long career stretched across the late Ancien Régime, the Revolution, and the Napoleonic era, which helps explain why he appears in so many different historical contexts. Modern scholarship has even treated him as a figure linked to French naval intelligence, suggesting a life that was both bureaucratic and unexpectedly adventurous.