Étienne Clavière

Étienne Clavière (Template:IPA; 29 January 1735Template:Snd8 December 1793) was a Genevan-born French financier and politician of the French Revolution. He was the French Minister of Finance between 24 March and 12 June 1792, and again between 10 August 1792 and 2 June 1793.

Career in Geneva and exile

Clavière was born on 29 January 1735 in Geneva, Republic of Geneva to Jean-Jacques Clavière, a cloth merchant.<ref name=HDS>Template:HDS</ref> His father was a Huguenot refugee from Serres who was admitted to the bourgeoisie of Geneva in 1735.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> After a commercial apprenticeship in Christian-Erlang, Clavière became a partner in the company Cazenove, Clavière et Fils.<ref name=HDS/> He emerged as a spokesman for the bourgeoisie during the Genevan political unrest of 1766–1768, and became a member of the Council of Two Hundred in 1770.<ref name=HDS/>

Clavière was one of the democratic leaders of the Geneva Revolution of 1782.<ref name=HDS/> After its suppression, he went into exile, becoming a financier in Paris in 1784.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> His brother moved to Brussels. Clavière associated with personalities from Neuchâtel and Geneva, among them Jean-Paul Marat and Étienne Dumont. Their plans for a "new Geneva" in Ireland—which the government of William Pitt the Younger favoured—were given up when Jacques Necker came to power in France, and Clavière, with most of his comrades, settled in Paris.<ref name="EB1911">{{#if: |

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  }}{{#ifeq:  ||}}</ref> In 1785, he collaborated with Theophile Cazenove.<ref>Lettre à M. Théophile Cazenove d'Amsterdam à J. J. Pallard de Marseille</ref> 

In 1787, Clavière visited the Dutch Republic, together with Jacques Pierre Brissot, and met with the banker Pieter Stadnitski. The Patriots were losing influence and territory and the French politicians went back.<ref>Mémoires de Brissot / avec introduction, notices et notes par M. de Lescure, p. 407</ref><ref>Jourdan, A. (2007). "The 'alien origins' of the French Revolution: American, Scottish, Genevan, and Dutch influences". Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History, 35, 185–205. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/p/pod/dodidx?c=wsfh;idno=0642292.0035.012</ref><ref>Rosendaal, J.G.M.M. (2005) De Nederlandse Revolutie. Vrijheid, volk en vaderland 1783–1799, pp. 242, 245.</ref> He co-founded the Template:Ill with Brissot in 1787.<ref name=HDS/>

French Revolution

Clavière and Brissot lived at 10 rue d'Amboise in 1789

In 1789, he and Dumont allied themselves with Honoré Mirabeau, secretly collaborating for him on the Courrier de Provence and also preparing speeches for Mirabeau to deliver—this association with Clavière sustained Mirabeau's reputation as a financier.<ref name="EB1911"/> He was one of the founding members and the first president of the Society of the Friends of the Blacks and of the Jacobin Club.<ref>Richard Whatmore et James Livesey, « Étienne Clavière, Jacques-Pierre Brissot et les fondations intellectuelles de la politique des girondins  », Annales historiques de la Révolution française [En ligne], 321 | juillet-septembre 2000, mis en ligne le 21 février 2006, consulté le 03 octobre 2020. URL : https://journals.openedition.org/ahrf/175 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/ahrf.175</ref>

Clavière also published some pamphlets under his own name, and through these and his friendship with Brissot, whom he had met in London, he was Minister of Finance in the Girondist ministry, from 24 March to 12 June 1792<ref name="EB1911"/> as a suppleant member of the Legislative Assembly for Seine, and supported Brissot.<ref>Richard Whatmore et James Livesey, « Étienne Clavière, Jacques-Pierre Brissot et les fondations intellectuelles de la politique des girondins  », Annales historiques de la Révolution française [En ligne], 321 | juillet-septembre 2000, mis en ligne le 21 février 2006, consulté le 03 octobre 2020. URL : https://journals.openedition.org/ahrf/175 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/ahrf.175</ref>

After the 10 August storming of Tuileries Palace, he was again given charge of the finances in the provisional executive council, but could not offer a remedy to France's financial difficulties (in particular, rampant inflation caused primarily by the excessive production of assignats). Clavière was a casualty of the fall of the Girondins, being arrested on 2 June 1793, but was not placed on trial with the rest in October. He remained in prison until 8 December, when, on receiving notice that he was to appear on the next day before the Revolutionary Tribunal, he died by suicide.<ref name="EB1911"/>

Further reading

• Jean Marc Rivier, Étienne Clavière (1735–1793): un révolutionnaire, ami des Noirs (Panormitis, 2006) Template:In lang