Jean-Baptiste Labat
| Jean-Baptiste Labat | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | 1663 near Paris |
| Died | 6 January 1738 Paris |
| Church | Roman Catholic |
| Writings | Nouveau voyage aux iles de l'Amerique and Voyage du Chevalier Demarchais en Guinee, iles voisines, et a Cayenne, fait en 1725, 1726, et 1727 |
Jean-Baptiste Labat (sometimes called, simply, Père Labat) (1663 – 6 January 1738) was a French clergyman, botanist, writer, explorer, ethnographer, soldier, engineer, and landowner.
Labat was born and died in Paris. He entered the order of the Dominicans at the age of twenty. He was ordained at the completion of his philosophical and theological studies. Besides preaching, he taught philosophy and mathematics to secular students at Nancy. Abandoning this work, he devoted himself to missionary activity and for many years preached in the various churches of France.
In 1693, determined to devote himself to foreign missionary work, he received permission from the general of his order to travel to the West Indies, then under French domination. On 29 January 1694, he landed in Martinique. He was entrusted with the parish of Macouba (Macumba), where he labored for two years and added many new buildings, including the church.
In 1696 he travelled to Guadeloupe, and was appointed procurator-general of all the Dominican convents in the Antilles (Procureur syndic des îles d'Amérique) upon his return to Martinique.
The French government appointed him as an engineer due to his scientific knowledge. In this capacity, he visited the French, Dutch, and English Antilles from Grenada to Hispaniola. Labat encountered many aspects of Caribbean society, including slavery. In his account for the year 1698, Labat included his impressions regarding the slaves of Martinique: "The dance is their favourite passion. I don't think that there is a people on the face of the earth who are more attached to it than they. When the Master will not allow them to dance on the Estate, they will travel three and four leagues, as soon as they knock off work at the sugar-works on Saturday, and betake themselves to some place where they know that there will be a dance."
Labat was no simple observer or opponent to slavery, however. As proprietor of the estate of Fonds-Saint-Jacques (in the north, alongside a river of the same name) and founder of the parish of François, both on Martinique, Labat applied himself to modernizing and developing the sugar industry on this island, and owned -and brutalized- his own slaves. Fonds-Saint-Jacques was for a long time regarded as a model to be copied. On Martinique, Labat's memory has survived in the vocabulary: La Tour du père Labat ("windmill"); les chaudières Père Labat (the Père Labat boilers"), or the standard of distillation known as type Père Labat.
...
Wikipedia