Guillaume-Thomas Raynal

Guillaume Thomas Raynal (12 April 1713 – 6 March 1796) was a French writer and man of letters during the Age of Enlightenment.

He was born at Lapanouse in Rouergue. He was educated at the Jesuit school of Pézenas, and received priest's orders, but he was dismissed for unexplained reasons from the parish of Saint-Sulpice, Paris. He became a writer and journalist, leaving the religious order for life. The Abbé Raynal wrote for the Mercure de France, and compiled a series of popular but superficial works, which he published and sold himself. These—L'Histoire du stathoudérat (The Hague, 1748), L'Histoire du parlement d'Angleterre (London, 1748), Anecdotes historiques (Amsterdam, 3 vols., 1753)—gained for him access to the salons of Mme. Geoffrin, Helvétius, and the Baron d'Holbach.

In May 1754 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society

He had the assistance of various members of the philosophe côteries in his most important work, L'Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (Philosophical and Political History of the Two Indies Amsterdam, 4 vols., 1770). Diderot is credited with a third of this work, which was characterized by Voltaire as "du réchauffé avec de la declamation." The other chief collaborators were Pechméja, Baron d'Holbach, Paulze, the farmer-general of taxes, the Abbé Martin, and Alexandre Deleyre. To this piecemeal method of composition, in which narrative alternated with tirades on political and social questions, was added the further disadvantage of the lack of exact information, which, owing to the dearth of documents, could only have been gained by personal investigation. He released an expanded edition in 1774 and another in 1780.

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