André-Daniel Laffon de Ladebat

André-Daniel Laffon de Ladebat (30 November 1746 – 14 October 1829) was a French financier, banker and philanthropist.

André Laffon de Ladebat was born in Bordeaux, France, the son of commercial ship-owner Jacques-Alexandre Laffon de Ladebat. He studied in the Netherlands at the Protestant University of Franeker.

In 1763, returning to France after a stay in England, de Ladebat entered his father's naval armaments business, and invested heavily in the development of an "Experimental Farm" in Pessac, and began to deforest the moors of Bordeaux. During the same period, he actively participated in the work of the Bordeaux Academy of Sciences, as well as the Academy of Painting and Sculpture, of which he was president.

De Ladebat distinguished himself through his writings on finance, political economy, and the improvement of living conditions. He is especially noted for his 1788 work "Discourse on the Necessity and the Means of Abolishing Slavery in the Colonies" which would be published in Bordeaux and read several years later in a session of the Legislative Assembly, and would be drawn upon by the Societé des amis des noirs (Society of Friends of Blacks) with which be became associated.

Despite his status as a noble, de Ladebat was appointed to the Estates-General of 1789. However, as he refused to resign from his post in order to represent the nobility in his département, he was removed from office. While a member of the executive committee of the Gironde in 1790, he was elected to serve as deputy from the Gironde at the Legislative Assembly, where he rejoined the moderate Feuillant royalist party: he presided over the Finance Committee and assumed the presidency of the Legislative Assembly in June, 1792. On 20 June 1792, during the riots at the Tuileries Palace, he defended King Louis XVI of France and the royal family, an action which led to his arrest the following December.

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