Jacques Peuchet

Jacques Peuchet (6 March 1758–28 September 1830) was a French jurist, statistician and compiler of archives. A monarchist, he was keeper of the archives of the French police. Karl Marx gave a vivid summary of Peuchet's career:

Jacques Peuchet proceeded from belles lettres to medicine, from medicine to law, from law to administration and the police. [He] was an adherent of the French Revolution for only a very short time; he very soon turned to the royalist party [...] he wound his way very cleverly through the revolution, sometimes persecuted, sometimes occupied in the Department of Administration and the Police.^[1]

Life

Trained as a lawyer, Peuchet worked as a secretary to André Morellet in the 1780s. He wrote a (1789) 'Discours preliminaire' on police etc. for the Encyclopédie Méthodique He was also employed by Charles Alexandre de Calonne and Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne.^[2]

He inherited Morellet's archives, using them for several works on economics and statistics.

Works

• Dictionnaire universel de la géographie commerçante. 5 vols. Paris: Blanchon, 1793.
• Vocabulaire des termes de commerce, banque, manufactures, navigation marchande, finance mercantile et statistique, 1801
• Statistique élémentaire de la France: contenant les principes de cette science et leur application à l'analyse de la richesse, des forces et de la puissance de l'Empire français: à l'usage des personnes qui se destinent à l'étude de l'administration, 1805
• Campaigns of the armies of France, in Prussia, Saxony, and Poland, Boston: Farrand, Mallory, and Co., 1808. Translated by Samuel Mackay from the French Campagne des armées françaises, en Prusse, en Saxe et en Pologne.

References