Baudrillart, Henri Joseph Léon

Baudrillart, Henri Joseph Léon (1821-1892), French economist, was born in Paris on the 28th of November 1821. His father, Jacques Joseph (1774-1832), was a distinguished writer on forestry, and was for many years in the service of the French government, eventually becoming the head of that branch of the department of agriculture which had charge of the state forests. Henri was educated at the Collège Bourbon, where he had a distinguished career, and in 1852 he was appointed assistant lecturer in political economy to M. Chevalier at the Collège de France. In 1866, on the creation of a new chair of economic history, Baudrillart was appointed to fill it. His first work was an Éloge de Turgot (1846), which at once won him notice among the economists. In 1853 he published an erudite work on Jean Bodin et son temps; then in 1857 a Manuel d’économie politique; in 1860, Des rapports de la morale et de l’économie politique; in 1865, La Liberté du travail; and from 1878 to 1880, L’Histoire du luxe ... depuis l’antiquité jusqu’à nos jours, in four volumes. At the instance of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques he investigated the condition of the farming classes of France, and published the results in four volumes (1885, et seq.). From 1855 to 1864 he directed the Journal des économistes, and contributed many articles to the Journal des débats and to the Revue des deux mondes. His writings are distinguished by their style, as well as by their profound erudition. In 1863 he was elected member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques; in 1870 he was appointed inspector-general of public libraries, and in 1881 he succeeded J. Garnier as professor of political economy at the École des Ponts et Chaussées. Baudrillart was made an officer of the Legion of Honour in 1889. He died in Paris on the 24th of January 1892.