Guillaume Thomas François Raynal - Biography

Guillaume Thomas François Raynal (1713 - 1796) was a French philosopher concerned with democratic and public issues. In Pézenas, he was trained by Jesuits and received priest’s orders. However, his parish dismissed him. After Guillaume Thomas François Raynal was dismissed, he devoted himself to his writing. His writings on the Netherlands and the English Parliament. first garnered him respect as a historian and thinker. His self-published series of works increased Raynal’s popularity. This popularity opened the door of influential salons. Much like his contemporaries, Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire, the social interactions in the period before and during the French Revolution provided Guillaume Thomas François Raynal with a cultural outlook that was not always favorable to the monarchy.

Guillaume Thomas François Raynal, along with his colleague Denis Diderot viewed the American Revolution as a necessary action. He did not see this revolution as so much the creation of a new system of governance as much as a continuation of the English extension of citizen rights and parliamentary power, They also considered the early American republic to have anti-empirical ambitions since it promoted local rule by the citizens. In L'Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, Guillaume Thomas François Raynal, in fact, praises the settlement of Pennsylvania as representing a move away from the standard European colonial model. In discussing the European migration before Pennsylvania, Raynal says that “disgust, horror, or melancholy” are the natural responses to the reports about the methods of colonization the Europeans used in the Americas. He indicates that Europeans are barbarous in their decimation of local populations before taking control of the land. Guillaume Thomas François Raynal also indicates that with movements like the American Revolution that the Enlightenment may be reaching the Americas.

In 1789, Guillaume Thomas François Raynal declined his election to the States General an act, despite his revolutionary sympathy. The refusal to become a representative seems to precede his later advocating for constitutional monarchy. Raynal represents a moderate position in a revolution that quickly spun into more reactionary stances. Ultimately, the clarification of Guillaume Thomas François Raynal’s political position (of Constitutional Monarchist and not of Republican) is not uncharacteristic since he was already perceived as being reactionary for his preference for a more American style political revolution. He was castigated as anti-revolutionary and an Anglophile. During this period, Guillaume Thomas François Raynal lost faith in the chance of a peaceful revolution, anticipating the bloodshed and human toll that would be the hallmarks of the French Revolution. Guillaume Thomas François Raynal warned against popular tyranny, but his warnings were ignored. It seems as if his observations of the cruelty committed by Europeans in the Americas would return to Europe.

Although Guillaume Thomas François Raynal gained a reputation that won him election to the Fellows of the Royal Society, some see his work with stringent negativity. His writings are criticized as being superficial. Large swathes of Guillaume Thomas François Raynal’s ultimate work, an encyclopedia called L'Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes were written by Denis Diderot.

However, Guillaume Thomas François Raynal’s L'Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes marks a significant moment in Enlightenment thinking since he turns the public gaze towards questions of European colonization. The work was revised and republished at least thirty times from 1770 to 1820. The later editions of L’Histoire are noted for their increased revolutionary slant. The number of reprints increases dramatically if the pirated editions are considered. Although not widely read today, the publication history signifies the lasting influence the work had in his time and points to the indelible mark of Guillaume Thomas François Raynal’s thought on a world in revolution.

Controversy surrounded Abbe Guillaume Thomas François Raynal publication of Raynal’s L'Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes. The French Parliament condemned the History as impious. It was viewed as a threat to French political stability since the work supported the principles of revolution as a basic right as well as political representation in exchange for taxation. The Roman Catholic Church officially banned the History in 1774 and ordered that copies were to be burnt. The political reaction to Guillaume Thomas François Raynal’s book led to Abbe Raynal’s exile.

During exile, Abbe Guillaume Thomas François Raynal spent time in the courts of Frederick the Great of Prussia and Catherine II of Russia. The Prussian court was not receptive to the Abbe; however, his reception in the Russian court in St. Petersburg was much warmer.

Abbe Guillaume Thomas François Raynal’s detractors did not only come from the monarchist and religious camps. Revolutionaries also took issue with his work. Not surprisingly, The accuracy of his information and analysis was also questioned by those who held revolutionary views. The American Revolutionary and member of the French National Convention, Thomas Paine wrote “A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal on the Affairs of North America; In Which the Mistakes in the Abbe’s Account of the Revolution of Amreica [sic] Are Corrected And Cleared Up.” Paine argues throughout this response that Guillaume Thomas François Raynal’s interpretations are inaccurate. One instance in which, Paine criticizes Raynal is as follows:

But in the manner in which the Abbe has arranged his facts, there is a very material error, that not only he, but other European historians, have fallen into: none of them having assigned the true cause why the British proposals were rejected, and all of them have assigned a wrong one.

Paine gets at the heart of the flaw many contemporary intellectuals found with the writings of Abbe Guillaume Thomas François Raynal—their superficiality. However, even Thomas Paine admits that there is elegance and sophistication in Guillaume Thomas François Raynal’s writing. Again in “A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal” Pain comments that: This combination of equivocal circumstances, falling within what the Abbe styles, "the wide empire of chance," would have afforded a fine field for thought; and I wish, for the sake of that elegance of reflection he is so capable of using, that he had known it.

Even in trying pointing out the flaws in Abbe Guillaume Thomas François Raynal’s work Paine hits on the elements, which made Abbe Raynal so prominent in his own time. Even in the criticism of the Abbe’s inconsistencies Paine, and Raynal’s other critiques, stumble upon one of his principle strengths—the incorporation of multiple sources that led to a more comprehensive look at the subjects that Abbe Guillaume Thomas François Raynal was discussing. Another factor that Paine overlooks in his vigorous critique of the Abbe Guillaume Thomas François Raynal is that Raynal was particularly familiar with the nature of the American milieu since Raynal belonged to the American Philosophical Society. Despite the objections raised by Paine and his ilk, the section in the Histoire concerning the United States of America is viewed as being one of the most important works on the early American state in eighteenth century Europe.

In looking at his life’s work, it is perhaps most important that the reader realizes not simply the fineness of Abbe Guillaume Thomas François Raynal’s thoughts—regardless of their occasional superficiality—but the importance and impact that Raynal had at the end of the Age of Enlightenment. Although Abbe Raynal would end his life being viewed as a reactionary, his works were essential to pre-revolutionary liberal French thought. In effect, his work laid the ground work for the more extreme revolutionaries that helped shape eighteenth and nineteenth century European politics.